High On Dopamine He Wants You Back by Christine Butterworth-McDermott

November 30, 2022

So you loved men who combusted, / spontaneously gave yourself to the flammable, / stripped yourself bare / for their ovens, splayed yourself for their driptorches.

Seasons by DW McKinney

November 30, 2022

She drinks to forget and drinks to feel different in her skin. She drinks to be someone else and drinks because she feels things she isn’t supposed to feel – because she is Black and Christian and because her parents raised her better.

Image of a man's shadow, holding a phone, reflected against a white wall with two empty photo frames.

Ghosting by Sarp Sozdinler

November 30, 2022

I imagined his spidery fingers hovering over his phone all night, at once touching and not touching it like the soft spots of my body.

Moonlit wolf standing, alert, in a green meadow.

This I Know by Julie Woodward

November 16, 2022

My headlights are on. They carve small spaces into the night. I want to shed this skin and curl myself into their void. I want to tuck myself into their cold. I want to be consumed by their nothingness. I want to be swallowed whole, too.

Night time, a police car with its blue lights alight on the roof of the car.

The Night’s Not Finished, but It’s Leaning Against the Wall by Taylor Collier

November 16, 2022

All/ day you’ve been plunking rusted metal / into your purse, and I never stopped to / ask what you really wanted

A foggy nature scene: trees and a stony creek.

Up Brown Jug Creek by Catherine Halley

November 9, 2022

Of course, this isn’t the witch-thick forest you read about in a fairytale. I am surrounded by green, fast-growing trees and shrubs—buckthorn and black locust and honeysuckle—relentlessly spreading along the banks of the stream. The trunks bow out over the water and form a canopy of shade.

An adult's pair of hands and one child's hand. They are manicured, and wearing rings.

Three Poems by L Favicchia

November 9, 2022

"i hold a tissue paper body/ as long as i can, / or until i must exhale."

Image of two people's legs, one person in black tights and high heels and another beside them in floral pants and sneakers. There is gold confetti on the wood floor.

Movie Stubs by Sophia Veltfort

November 9, 2022

In the weeks leading up to my friend’s wedding, instead of studying for the GRE, I’d made mental tallies of people I dreaded but could reasonably expect to see in Poland.

Memory/Movie by Jason Sepac

November 9, 2022

How much have I spliced into my memory?

Left: Talia Lakshmi, smiling, wearing hoop earrings and a purple and white scarf. Her shirt is green. On the right: Cover of book, "What We Feed To The Manticore." Title in bold, black letters. Illustrations of blue tiger, roses. Background, yellow.

A Normal Interview with Talia Lakshmi Kolluri by Samina Najmi

November 2, 2022

I have always come to both reading and writing from a somewhat genderless space. What I mean is that both writing and reading have been mechanisms for me to try on different lives and experiences.

A child's hand holding a crayon as they color on a page. A glass full of coloring crayons sits beside their hand.

First Story by Sarah Gambito

November 2, 2022

"What do you say to someone who has been gone for so long."

Image of a red helium balloon heart against a white background. A white woman's arm holding it in frame.

A Longer and Slightly More Complicated History of Her Heart by Mary Jones

November 2, 2022

She thought she knew of everything that could happen to the human heart, it seemed most of it had happened already to her mother.

Lit Jack-O-Lantern seen through a clouded window, being held up by hands, surrounded by cobwebs.

What Does Your Halloween Costume Say About Your Gender?: Quiz Results By Jackie Domenus

October 31, 2022

You stand there silently, breathing candy breath into your mask until your face gets damp. Your best friends are cheerleaders, witches, fairies. But you’re just a structure of a person, an outline of a body, quiet and haunted.

A top-down view of a bottle of white pills. The white pills are backlit and seem to glow. The inside of the bottle is a very light green and red.

Drug Facts by Hillary Adams

October 19, 2022

"The first will make you numb, but you’ll be thin so everyone will tell you how good you look and that should equate happiness, or at least not wanting to die."

Image of a blue sky with a few clouds and an airplane directly above.

Delta by Dionne Irving

October 12, 2022

We didn’t have friends on board. We didn’t have friends of friends on board. And we hadn’t ever even been to Miami, or to Brazil. So we went about our day. We made coffee.

A square image with a white background and three lines of paint in the colors pink, purple, and blue: the colors of the bisexual flag.

Two Poems by Jo Blair Cipriano

October 12, 2022

Death reminds me too much of myself./ I mean, if you watched an animal die/ in agony, would you still enjoy eating its flesh?

Image of a sail boat in the distant, surrounded by a gray, foggy ocean

Jack in Search of a Mother by Alison Kinney

October 12, 2022

Jack looked at his own two feet dangling over the giant's shoulder. He thought about how small he was next to the giant, beside the sea.

Left: Manuel Muñoz with hand on head, wearing jean jacket. Right: Book cover of "The Consequences." Black background, two golden feathers in center.

A Normal Interview with Manuel Muñoz by Manuel Farias

October 11, 2022

"What we think is a really small, isolated place turns out to be the center of somebody else’s world."

Shadow Work by Soramimi Hanarejima

October 5, 2022

After work, we meet in the park near your office to swap shadows.

An analog clock with its hands at 10:30 , on a blank white wall,

Chronostasis by Sarah Fawn Montgomery

September 28, 2022

Tamogotchis are everywhere in middle school, cradled in our hands during math when we learn about angles and remainders, the goal to take what is whole and break it apart. The egg buzzes several times a day as a reminder that survival is not guaranteed.