September 27, 2019 | Nonfiction
The Contest
Margaret Sherwin
From the time I was seven until I started taking Seroquel, an anti-psychotic, I had this unending feeling of doom. ‘My go to’, be that of death.
September 26, 2019 | Poetry
Three Poems
Fiona Helmsley
I kept my thoughts about Bitchface Becky to myself
but then Beyoncé did something magical
September 25, 2019 | Nonfiction
The Night I Could Have Met the Real Matt Damon
Sarah Broussard Weaver
Our waitress bustles around smiling a strangely huge smile for this boring work night. My boyfriend Nick and I don’t follow football and weren’t invited to any parties, and since most Texans are either holding or attending parties the place is pretty deserted. After the waitress brings our waters she follows her normal script and asks if we want to try a signature TGI Fridays drink, but her eyes keep dancing to the bar behind us.
September 24, 2019 | Fiction
Delete All Future Events
Brian Bartels
Perhaps we are simply trying to figure out how to stay inside a relationship – our relationship – and figure out how to physically exit the space we currently inhabit and enter another.
My First Game Console: Nintendo Entertainment System
David Armand
My wife and kids and I are driving around in New Orleans, not too far from where I spent the first years of my life and then the occasional week during the summer when I stayed with my grandmother
‘Getting Cancelled Means You Are Permanently Working Class’: Elizabeth Ellen Interviews Brian Allen Carr
Elizabeth Ellen
When I was younger, if you had a hard time following rules, you became an artist.
Now, if you have a hard time following rules, you become an entrepreneur.
People in the literary world follow rules the most.
Quick Stop
Christina Drill
I was seventeen, so he was a man — had I been older, maybe not.
Life Selector: You Take Control
Sasha Graybosch
Show her face to the camera. Put your finger in her mouth.
The Red Table
Kelly Hevel
I felt as cold and empty as that body lying in that casket lined with fabric smooth and silky white, so different from what usually cradled my grandma’s skin, those soft, oft-washed dresses always topped with a floral apron.
Three Poems
Brody Parrish Craig
Bible | Vers
Top to Bottom | scan my profile | For Christ’s Sake | Sing Jesus’ Name | I gospel & apostle | Book of Vers | My rural bottom’s up | My crop /top | down along the road | a hym(n) in
Letter Home from Hyperspace #2
Zoë Ryder White
There’s a song in my figurative head
that I can’t shake loose.
When I was a body,
I did so many things with my hands,
I can’t count.
Around here it smells like lightning,
like plasma.
Coming Home
Suvi Mahonen
05:05 am. My eyes open. A faint pearly blade of light squeezing past the blind. The distant metallic scrape of a moving tram.
i fuck who i want with a mutual understanding
nooks krannie
i’ve never attended a wedding and i wasn’t going to start now. my muscles were aching and my jaw was carrying a million bees, terrorizing the sides of my ears and throat.
My First Car: A Melted Ford Explorer
Cordelia Wilks
By the time the keys were in my eager teenaged hand, this car had been through some shit. Even ignoring the holes burned into the driver’s-side door, the missing half of the left side mirror, and the warped, discolored metal down the rest of the vehicle, the car was 13 years old already, and it looked it.
The Bottom of the Order: Snap, Go, Fling
Andrew Forbes
The cherry and strawberry seasons have passed; the apples are reddening. Only a few games remain. A Pit Spitter lays down a bunt, and the runner on third crashes in: a perfect suicide squeeze.
The Worshipping Beast
Brian Clifton
All that whimpers isn’t want.
One spring, I pulled
a reed from an oboe.
I planted it by a pond.
Instantly, it grew
dense at the water’s edge.
The wind told lie after lie—
black
You Cannot Save Here
Anthony Moll
Morning gets angry and destroys a city
not New York, too obvious, but suppose
it’s on the coast. Suppose we’re the first to go
I picture Goya’s Colossus and my empathy
runs threadbare. Suppose
Layover
Paige Thomas
There is snow that falls like a snake. It comes from the sky hissing and finds a bush to hide beneath. The leaves on the branches of the River Birch are alive, again, vibrating. They are brown and
Paper Wasps
Joseph Worthen
He’s soaked in sweat already and all he’s done is drive. He must know what they are here to find.
Trendsetter
Ryan Matthews
“Well, just be careful you don’t get caught with your pants down at the wrong kinda toilet.”
Egg Face
Hea-Ream Lee
Sometimes I want to take the industrial strength green Korean loofah, my sandpapery mitten, and just scrub at my face until huge chunks of flesh tear away and roll into brown fleshy noodles and fall to the floor. Afterwards, I won’t be bloody and flayed, all raw nerve endings and hamburger meat, I’ll be smooth as a peeled egg, soft and firm and pliant to the touch.
MY SUPERPOWER
Amie Whittemore
in response to a student evaluation for a science fiction class, Fall 2018
Student, it’s true—I prefer women
to lentils, to crossfit classes,
to retirement plan
The Pastor and Marguerite
Melissa Mesku
My heart is open. I can feel it. It’s never open. This can’t be a coincidence. This—
Magic Booth
Chris J. Bahnsen
My father’s disjointed rage has shocked him—I’ve seen that look before. He no longer draws from his beer even as Dad tilts his own way up.
Cultured Meat Pastoral
Lucian Mattison
Goats and cows’ dreams have little pull yet. Cheese
is still cheese, piston driven milkers likely painful. The future
of sirloin strips it of skin, legs, bones, grown without
the cortex of
Three Poems
Rosebud Ben-Oni
{All I Wanted Was Everything}
You say you know the reason why Archimedes




