Featured Essay
I’m the Guy Who (Almost) Killed the Guy Who (Almost) Killed Albert Einstein | James J. Patterson
The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament arrived in Washington, D.C., on November 15th, 1986. The participants had marched all the way from California to my hometown, the Capital of the Empire, to protest nuclear weapons. Under President Reagan, the war industry had shrugged off the negative image it had acquired during the Vietnam... Continue reading→
I Don’t Want to Be a Person’s My Person Because Persons Aren’t Very Good People | Exodus Oktavia Brownlow
The reason why I don’t like the saying my person is, well, try to use it in a song. It just doesn’t sound very nice at all to fall from lips ladled with that my person to whisper, to a someone, at a time, on a night when the mind’s madness turns into music. Alone,... Continue reading→
The Light That Follows | Micah Chatterton
Once, drunk, two brothers decided to walk west until they reached the ocean. The older one was to be married seven days later to a kind, dark-haired woman, so the younger one never left his side for more than a minute that night. There were other, incidental men in their group, but their names have... Continue reading→
“Call Me” Duet | Alexander Burdette
(pt. 1) I think when I say “anything but ‘it,’” what I really mean is, “Make some choices so I can see if they work for me. Call me ‘he.’ Call me ‘they,’ in the same breath. Call me ‘e’ or ‘xe’ or ‘nir,’ so I can hear it. Call me ‘she,’ even, but make... Continue reading→
Skate Sundays | Jennifer Todhunter
We had these skateboard ramps to the left of the house, a mini ramp and a vert ramp and forty or so skaters every Sunday with their dogs and stoke and speakers blasting new school punk and old school country and sometimes It’s Brittany, Bitch, and during the peak heat in summer some of the... Continue reading→
Type Casting | Matthew E. Henry
“That’s some white people shit.” “What?” “Were all of the people who thought you were gay white?” “It’s not that they thought I was gay exactly…” “Not straight. Whatever. Were all of them white?” “No.” I mentally scroll through faces and races. “Yes?” “See? You don’t fit their Black-Man stereotype, other than dating white women…”... Continue reading→
On a Monday, Mourning Doves | Michael Todd Cohen
The mournful cooing of the Mourning Dove is one of our most familiar bird sounds. European settlement of the continent, with its opening of the forest, probably helped this species to increase. Regularly swallows grit (small gravel) to aid in digestion of hard seeds. — Audubon On a Monday, I drag something out to... Continue reading→
“To live in one world and breathe in another” | Shiksha Dheda
CW: mental illness - title taken from Science girl(@gunsnrosesgirl3) tweet on 25/10/2022 They say that no other whale can hear his 52Hz cries of solitude. The blue whale being heard at 10 – 39Hz; the fin whale being heard at 10Hz; they can all hear one another. No one can hear him. No... Continue reading→
The Revolution comes to the Midwest | Tommy Dean
Dakota leans against the stop sign, hand outstretched flipping off driver after driver. Kids in backseats meet his eye, and he smiles, beckons them to join him. The ones that turn in their seats, heads popping up in the glass as the car retreats. These are his favorites. His fellow revolutionaries. They'll grow up remembering... Continue reading→
Bump in the Night | Benjamin Woodard
A noise wakes us at 2 a.m., and when we open the door to Zoi’s bedroom, rather than spotting the five-year-old tucked under blankets, Stefani and I are greeted by Zoi’s small, padded frame wrestling with her pink down jacket, for she must already be wearing three pairs of pants, six shirts, four sets of... Continue reading→
Night of the Butterflies: A Broken Sestina | Tara Campbell
We stood around the bonfire, warming our hands at its glow. I could tell Samantha was fretting about something, but I didn’t ask, trusting her to tell us in her own time. I guessed it had something to do with the ropes Raj was handing out. “Pretend you’ve got to reach a drowning man,” Raj... Continue reading→