News comes back your cancer has spread, / so we go out to celebrate / you not being dead / yet.
Read MoreA Normal Interview with William Archila by Angelina Leaños
This is the great thing about immersing myself in the world I am creating in my work. The tropes, concepts, the culture and history, the places and characters, they all come together.
Read MoreTransplant by Yance Wyatt
our feet seized by quicksand / as the ocean breathes in and out / in and out / like one great pneumonic lung
Read MoreHeat Wave by Madeline Furlong
I could have gone to a bar; I could have skated down to the water and lit up and watched the lake waves. I could have rented a car and driven up to Caroline’s mother’s, banged on the door, refused to leave until Caroline came out. But soon I was standing in front of Cinema 17. The marquee listed one more showing.
Read MoreAlongside Blue by Afton Montgomery
I, alongside him, folded every napkin in the same direction. Nudged straight the faded carpet samples that made every cement step down to the basement a different frugal pattern and color. I wished our house number—off by only one digit—was a clean 12345.
Read MoreLEAVE ME AT THE BREAK by Benjamin Faro
Altogether we were / uncountable, and another / of us we abandoned / at the shore.
Read MoreColors of Sound by Hantian Zhang
White emerges when all wavelengths of light reflect off an object with equal intensity, much like how white noise distributes its amplitude across its entire frequency range. Examples abound: running water, the whir of a fan, the hum of a vacuum.
Read MoreThe Great Food Question by Leah Harris
And I realize that layered in pasta and ham, spinach and oats, maybe the food question is really a language of love, a question of intimacy — because what’s closer to a person than the food they eat?
Read MoreAt the Supernova of Boyhood by Joe Bonomo
In his memoir 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, Robyn Hitchcock’s assembled a lovely, evocative, characteristically quirky portal back to that heady time.
Read MorePeach Ode by Matt Poindexter
Sweet teenage goths, come back / from evening’s municipal cemeteries / and haunt the living for a minute.
A Hospitable Man by Theodora Ziolkowski
The kind of man Cathy imagined would pursue an eleven-year-old should be tall and fit. He ought to wear fitted washed jeans, his button-up sleeves rolled loosely. His fingers should be stacked with rings, and a tattoo should climb the side of his neck, his forearm or bicep. But the man who’d sought out Cathy was short and stocky. His pasty skin had a sheen that made it look extra malleable, like putty.
Read MoreCome In Go Ahead Say Again by Christopher Citro
Skies have moods. We gave these / to them. Named the rivers. Imagine that.
Two Poems by Court Castaños
An old man will watch us, openly / stare, two boys in a Nevada diner / leaning towards each other, a touch / too close.
Notes on an Apology by Scott Ditzler
I told myself it wasn’t my responsibility. I told myself it wasn’t my fault, and grabbed my flannel off the back of the chair, the bag of scripts off the sink. I found my jeans at the foot of the bed, my shoes, my cigarettes, and I walked out into the cold.
Read MoreTwo Poems by Matti Powers
In a third smoke session of the night sort of way I ask him / what’s the worst thing he’s ever done. He searches me for the / fish hook, says he was unfaithful-a few times-to the first girl he / loved.
Read MoreReductionism by Liz Harms
Any moment the doctor / will knock—the wait suspenseful, caught / breath before a jump scare.
Read MoreExercises by Brooke Champagne
Enter: The Clown.
Read MoreThe Third-Best Clown in New York by Aaron Rabinowitz
Suddenly, the building’s main door banged open. Something heavy was being lugged up the stairs. Kevin slid behind me and dragged open the apartment door.
Read MoreTerminal Degrees by Angela Townsend
I have letters after my name, but they are profane, so I do not use them. The saints in the catacombs would rise up and declare me anathema if I did. But the transcript says what it says.
Read MoreTaxidermy Lessons by Maren Loveland
Lay the snapping turtle’s corpse / on a swarming ant hill, // return to it after the flesh / is joyously devoured.
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