July 10, 2018 | Nonfiction
Turning 40
Larissa Kosmos
After I turned thirty-five, the age of forty circled me like a shark. My dread of it intensified with each passing year. On my thirty-eighth birthday, I braced myself. The movement in the water had
July 6, 2018 | Fiction
The Machine Sleeps In The Corner, Dreaming
Andy Myers
The machine sleeps in the corner. Its dreams are projected onto large white walls where we watch them and record our reactions.
July 5, 2018 | Poetry
FIVE POEMS
Jacqueline Young
while i / in half-lotus / pluck stubble from / my belly
She’s So Unusual
Dan Morey
“Get in here!” yelled Grandma. “Carrot Head is gonna sing!”
In Bloom
Kevin Sampsell
Daisy was going to community college classes out on SE 82nd and trying to figure out what direction her life should take. Her classes were Dental Hygiene, Religious Studies, and Ethics in Improv Comedy.
Against The Ground
Sommer Schafer
It’s the sun, I told myself again. Too much sun makes people too hyper, too happy, too sure of themselves. What we need is a little rain, some dark clouds, a berating storm.
Four Poems
Darin Ciccotelli
Rain drags its cage / through the neighborhood. You / see nothing but // trenches. Rusty shovels, / the alien rocks sprayed / like genitals.
Desperately Seeking Whoopi: Whoopi Goldberg, live at the Motorcity Casino, Detroit, Friday, June 15th, 2018
Elizabeth Ellen
Ironically, hours before we went to see Whoopi, I texted two friends from my bathtub that I didn’t think I would ever write another essay. It was “too hard.” “People only want to vilify you, so they look for words to use to that end, and ignore the rest of what you’ve said.”
Four Poems
Brandon Melendez
For weeks after, I watched California burn / out my window & on the evening news & the ash // in my cheeks became the only way/ to pronounce home.
ugly dusk
Logan February
Jack Daniel screams his way down my throat & it’s a dry thrust.
Mopwater Soup
Nikolai McLeod
McGuiness in bed with chow mien. Eyeballs floating in melatonin.
“Watch your back,” moans ceiling fan. TV glow damaging optic nerves, retina, etc.
Trapdoor in Benzedrine bottle on floor. Deep in
Always an Animal at the End of the Leash
Bryce Emley
My dog keeps biting me when he’s scared / and, like anyone, is always scared.
The Devil and Ellen and Charles
Mary Clemens
When, on August 18, 2015, the dog the internet called “The Devil” was finally cornered by the Salt Springs police department several of its victims, those sufficiently recovered from their wounds,
Things in my Room: Versace Gold Duffel Bag
Martha Grover
Now I’m not dating anymore and I use the gold duffel bag to haul my belongings from one house-sitting gig to the next.
Vedran Husic Interview
Michael Deagler
Every writer knows the rule of ‘write what you know,’ but the interesting thing is that you don’t really know what you know until you write it.
Three Poems
Tom Kelly
With the bobby pin I’ve kept beneath my tongue all morning, / my fingers spring the lock to my parent’s bedroom // where mom’s cherry lipstick glows beneath a seashell lamp.
Vampire Weekend
Darby Cashed
You joined in, and told Danielle that she should only serve us drinks in diamond pimp glasses.
WEED MILEY
Shane Jesse Christmass
WEED MILEY. Come back to us Weed Miley. I plonk down on the water sofa. Weed Miley screams into the mirror. She had invited me to join them. Weed Miley talks here, I then talk. Weed Miley enters wearing a cloth nightgown.
The Man Who Rescued a Book From the Rain: A Conversation
Emma Smith-Stevens
I based the Australian on a man I met in a coffee shop when I was 19. We went back to his place and did coke together, and he told me all about himself...
Three Poems
Alyssandra Tobin
New Jersey as land of claws & fangs & deep fields of grass that stumble onto the side of the highway // New Jersey as fields of soft dirty ice // New Jersey as blondhairblueeyes slapping you in the face at lunch in the cafeteria in front of all your friends
Zebras and Pandas
Xenia Taiga
The cartels were losing the battle. Everywhere they dug they met a new obstacle. There was freshly poured concrete down their northwest tunnel. They discovered recently installed top of the line micro security cameras. They came face to face with growling German shepherds.
Breaking Up With Pathology
Sara Greenslit
At first, it seemed like a poet’s dream day job. A job of watching, then describing.
Five Poems
Chris Hayes
I’ve mooned away my marriage, / grounded it, ripped the fuselage / in two, or is the better metaphor
to say I heard the countdown go / from ten to zero and didn’t even / try to stop my wife from breaking / the gravity of disaster planet me?
Gray Cat, Purple Rug
Fawzy Zablah
On that rainy morning of that last day, I delivered some homemade ajiaco, Colombian chicken soup, to my mother, and my ex-girlfriend who was expecting a child that might be her husband’s or mine.