January 15, 2018 | Fiction
The Demise of Fragaria Ananassa
Danielle Lea Buchanan
Tongue hasn’t left its .276 square foot efficiency studio apartment in three weeks. To discourage visitors due to lack of space, this space was rented. Tongue is going through a break-up. This
Everything After
Chloe Caldwell
After I finished the reading, I waited a couple minutes, browsing books, until I left the bookstore - alone. All the women who’d watched me, who were so supportive, so attractive, were huddled in a group. They were friends, they were a community.
Interview with Jill McDonough
Daniel Pieczkolon
Thank you for calling that curiosity “innocent.” I like the sense of “innocent" as “guileless,” rather than “not-guilty,” since the poems sketch both our ignorance and our complicity. I
Sennah Yee in Conversation with Guillaume Morissette
Guillaume Morissette
Toronto-based writer Sennah Yee’s first collection, How Do I Look?, is quick-witted, lucid, observant and constantly rewarding. Though her book is technically classified as poetry, her pieces feel more like vignettes to me, mini-stories and personal anecdotes that seem to be examining their feelings in real time, tackling in the process a wide range of topics such as mythological figures, the movie Mulan, The Sims, sexual awakenings, microaggressions, Grand Theft Auto 5, being Chinese-Canadian and much more.
Suggestion / Fight
Mikaela Grantham
Suggestion
new boyfriend says he’s worried. new boyfriend says i should stop saying credit cards are just free money. new boyfriend says i should stop telling strangers at the bar lyme disease
In the 70s Everyone, Including Mannequins, Had Nipples
Lynn Schmeidler
Once upon a time there was no sex, but sex was everywhere: in Laura's 6th grade locker with her roll-on deodorant, in Dr. Davidson's walk—slow and tight-calved, in Mr. Robinson's guitar—Cat Steven's "Wild World" each afternoon before the bell, in Mrs. Roger's wavy, knee- length red hair—smelling of Wella Balsam and cigarettes.
The Record
Dan Morey
The Record
Fear
Label: Slash
Released: May 16, 1982
Length: 14 songs, 27 minutes
This is about a dead guy. But it’s 1995 and the dead guy isn’t dead yet. He’s driving. A black
How to Gut a Grouse
Penny Newell
reach inside the incision
up the stomach from the asshole
ribcage gristle light brown mound of heather memory
spill oddities, like miraculous whole red berries
feel for the heart with two
The Coming Anarchy
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
~ W.B Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’
One day, your borders shall speak;
Indignant birds will shit on your
Five Poems
Spencer Williams
Under the cruel glow of inquiry, I want to tell her that the party is over.
Mesa, Arizona, 1985
Elizabeth Ellen
By the time I arrived at the Phoenix airport the next summer I was thirty pounds heavier. I’d spent the previous nine months eating vending machine moonpies and packaged cookies in my dorm room.
Sun, Miles Away
Stephen Thomas
The sun is a dwarf star 93 million miles away. The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a spiky glass appendage that sprouts out of the Royal Ontario Museum’s original brick in downtown Toronto, was unveiled on August 5, 2007.
Four Poems
Kamal E. Kimball
Hurry, tomorrow’s ashen face is at your door.
Hold out your hands, two tiny suns,
you’re more golden than they ever told you.
A Starting Lineup Baseball Collector's Stand
Aaron Burch
This was the year Canseco was the first to join the 40/40 club, hitting over 40 homeruns and stealing 40 bases in the same season.
Africa!
Uzodinma Okehi
My grandfather, his English name was Benson. As the houseboys opened the gates, he came out on the balcony and fired off a shotgun, boom, one or two blasts.
Aladdin
Chloe Caldwell
I remember seeing Aladdin on Christmas Eve with my friend Kylie when I was seven years old.
The Icicles
Chelsea Martin
I made my mom promise me that she was going to live until she was 100 years old, and I would be 82 and we would die together, peacefully, holding hands.
'Twas the Night Before Christmas
Mary Miller
My siblings and I never liked each other as much as we did on those early mornings; we never made a better team.
The Virgin Mary
Adesuwa Agbonile
It doesn’t make the sound that you think it would make. I mean, I figured it would be loud, or top-heavy. But it sounded like almost nothing, like water dripping from a shower faucet three rooms
Girl From Uni
Chaya Bhuvaneswar
You’re from the cornfields, I tease, but not really. Your parents, professors at U of Illinois, both versed in the theories of music, both of them concert pianists. They play hushed, reverent duets