ART:
The Connectivity of Our World | The Sculptures of Susan Clinard
FICTION:
Cameron Darc, Siamak Vossoughi, Matthew Gordon, Nikki Barnhart, Stephen Mortland, Noah Pohl, George Singleton
GUEST FOLIO:
Edited by Elizabeth Graver
Genevieve DeLeon, Ramona Reeves, Franklin Einspruch, Karin Cecile Davidson, Jonathan Todd, Christine A. Neu, Will Dowd, Yang Huang
NONFICTION:
Andy Gottschalk, Rick Brown, Peter Krumbach, Paula Dimidis, Celia Cummiskey, Allison Field Bell, Natasha Williams
POETRY:
Robbie Gamble, Haolun Xu, Shanan Kurtz, T.S. Leonard
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Kate McIntyre, David Philip Mullins, Felicia Zamora, Pablo Piñero Stillmann, C.T. Salazar
FEATURED
Sky, Ladder, Cow, Lantern, Lake, Flowers, Heaven
by Shane Jones
From the forthcoming novel Young Forest
The hotel PDC was found online for two hundred dollars off the original price. Melanie had celebrated with half a beer and then immediately felt guilty because she imagined the alcohol infusing with her breast milk and brain damaging Julian.
Medication
by Eric Buechel
This Mindy was mending a rip in her pants with a spool of cinnamon dental floss. You could see the criss-cross pattern of red where she’d already gone over. It looked sturdy enough. She sat next to an old pitbull with markings on it like a brown and white spotted cow. It wagged its tail a little when we got close. Otherwise, it looked nailed down to the cardboard, too exhausted to attempt a sniff at our pant legs.
Three Poems
by Peter Markus
The days pile up, one on top
of the other, until we are standing
on top of a mountain looking
out at a sky with no sun or moon.
Not even the stars ask who we are…
My Mother Caught on Fire
by Marston Hefner
That was when, as I lay on the ground losing blood, the once thought to be cat but now understood to be dangerous and timid child rushed in, from God knows where to steal whatever was within reach…
Living With Molly
by Sam Fishman
Right now, you’re sitting on the bed we made together. You’re lying under the mustard linen sheets we slept on and you’re just like these linen sheets because you’re one more nice thing I’ve never had before.
Three Poems
by Elizabeth Ellen
I felt dead inside all the time
Unless I was looking at Machine Gun Kelly online
And then I felt alive
(Alive in the way that makes you want to get a bunch of tattoos, I mean)
Three days from The Weird Years
by Ryan Ridge and Mel Bosworth
I spied them through the peephole and thought, okay, let’s have some fun. “One second,” I said, and then I went out the back door and circled to the front. I took my phone from my back pocket and began an imaginary conversation, a loud one. “Yeah, so what?” I said. “What does that mean to me? I don’t care about any moose. Well, this isn’t a normal situation.”
Read more….
Breadcrumbs to Home
by Michele Zimmerman
At her daughter’s third birthday party, Jenn swears she can smell her father’s cologne on her hands. But Jenn’s father is long gone and Jenn doesn’t wear cologne. She avoids looking at her wife, who she knows is watching, and cuts a thick slice of cake with pink frosting.
Cheap Night
by Garielle Lutz
She spoke of little shares of chocolate she had once arranged and rearranged until they were practically mush and had to be licked off her fingers by more than just one lonesome mouth but her boyfriend was nowhere to be found. She’d had to recruit a girl she knew from the public pool who kept perfecting more and more ways of looking marooned.
Continue to Live
by Oliver Zarandi
It was a “safe” motel and as we drove up, two men came out with their masks on and asked us to get out of the car. They waved guns at us and said it was all procedure, nothing to worry about. I loved it.
The House
by Guillermo Stitch
He would have liked a moment to steel himself before pressing the bell. To gird himself for this potentially life-changing encounter. These people could push you around if you let them.
Durée
by Christopher Kang
A friend admitted to me one day that I was his best friend and I, not knowing what to say, replied, “Thank you.” Years later, I still linger on that reply, irked by the excessive accuracy of it.
Tawny
Lincoln Michel
“These filthy animals.” Olivia looked at me with her lip curled all the way up to the nose. “Can you believe it? Disgusting.”
Olivia wasn’t talking about the dogs. …
Ringer
Glen Pourciau
He continued to address me, mostly in German, and I understood nothing of what he said, except words I’d learned from World War II movies. He didn’t care at all that I could not understand him and I had an inkling he may have preferred it that way.
Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town
RJC Smith
We were on the roof, smoking pot. Rena had a pair of binoculars. It was the last summer, or any season for that matter, that I would spend with my father, the last before his unfortunate break.
Four Stories
Raegan Bird
When Jean was young, he rescued a magpie from a fallen nest. He kept it by a pot of warm water for a few nights and it did just fine. He called it Marguerite.
Frugality
by Mark Halliday
I who am apt to get tearful about any instance,
fictional or real, of loyal love that defies time …
Mermaid
by Gregory Spatz
There were grooves or indentations of some kind in the gel-foam of the gaff underwear to accommodate Avram’s testicles. “To help push them back into the sockets that would be my ovaries, if I had any,” he said, helpfully, by way of instruction, as he pressed and wiggled – the idea being total erasure: pull the junk in, tuck it back, make it vanish.