November 1, 2021 | Nonfiction
Penelope Went to Episcopal Church Feeling Melancholy
Jade Song
I will never read this essay out loud, so let me take some risks:
Almond, salmon, Episcopal, peony, Adidas, melancholy, mischievous.
In my head: Owl-mund, sal-MON, epic-SKO-poll.
I add force
October 31, 2021 | fucked up modern love essays
Someone Could Mean Anyone
Koty Neelis
Still though, that’s fucked up.
I agree, I say. It is fucked up.
October 30, 2021 | Fiction
Hallowed Ground
Kim Farbota
Even in death, I would make a showing of my conscientiousness. I would step into a black trash bag, first removing my heels to avoid a snag. I’d put a note on the outside of a second bag before pulling it over my head. “Please do not open; call the police.”
October 29, 2021 | Nonfiction
Circular Time
Aarron Sholar
I stand in front of this body-length mirror. The compression vest is gone, the drains are removed, and all the cushioning gauze has been peeled away; I’ve watched video after video of other
Ambire
Shreya Fadia
I’ve never run for political office and have no desire to run—which is not to say that I’ve never thought about it—but I do know what it is to move, to travel, to traverse, to go around for the sake of one’s ambitions.
Rewatching The Office To Keep My Dead Ex-Boyfriend Alive
Shannon J. Curtin
The last time I dream of him, my dead ex-boyfriend asks me to stop bringing him back.
Usually, when I dreamt him alive, he didn’t speak. I’d sit next to him while he sorted mail. I’d watch him turn
The Mermaid
Libby Copa
The water witch said that if I cut my hair and killed the prince and his new bride she would turn my legs back into fins and I could go home. I didn’t have to think about it very hard.
Choosing a Wedding Gift for the Only Person You Ever Loved
Dillon Fernando
When I mention this flash of sexual fluidity to people, it bothers them.
Midsummer in the Spirit Realm
Dave Fromm
Felt, for a minute, like some façade had slipped, like a glitch in the matrix. Is this in fact the car we came in? Are we who we think we are?
It's Later Than You Think
Adam McOmber
When I was dead, I returned to my father’s house, an old farmstead in Northwestern Ohio, and I stood alone in the gravel drive, satisfied to see that the house was just as I remembered it—small and gray, rising on a plot of land west of a moonlit apple orchard.
Reality Is Not Enough
Rebecca Mlinek
I checked the rest of the house, but everyone was asleep. I had a brief moment of nothingness, of emptiness, and then terror bloomed.
Three Poems
Bobby Vanecko
Wisconsin
Can we please
go back to
your uncle’s house
in Wisconsin
that was used in
the movie
Amityville Horror
the house is
definitely haunted
but beautiful
even with the
piles of dead
Crying at the Russian Ballet
Benjamin Davis
The curtains opened, the ballerinas emerged, toes became violins, hands, trumpets, backs, cellos.
You Make Me Cry
Molly Zhu
You make me cry
when you talk about her, and only now do I realize
that you never knew your mother at all,
there simply was no space for her in your crowded pocket
carrying poverty like a
Normal Girls Who Aren’t Afraid of Crackers
Meg Thompson
“Maybe your ears are broken,” my husband mused to me one night at dinner.
I was wearing headphones, eyes trained to study my plate, the sight of chewing as triggering as the audible noises.
My Roommate from Eleven North
Barrie Miskin
They liked to brag. Who had the highest dose of anti-psychotic medication? Who had gone the furthest off the rails during a manic episode? And they loved to boast about their suicide attempts. Whose was the most gruesome?
Unity Trash
Kate McLean
When Tony died, I stopped recycling. The kind of power play that was both meaningful and meaningless.
Prison Killed My Libido
Sheryl Anderson as-told-to Christine Fadden
I don’t write “I have the libido of a sloth” in my online dating profile. I don’t use my real surname now either.
Bride School Girls
Amanda Churchill
The Class of 1953 Tachikawa Air Base Bride School girls were fertile, well-fed and rested.
This isn’t a story about being in a wheelchair
Lane Chasek
The only reason I’ve seen Space Jam: A New Legacy so much recently is because I wanted to avoid talking to my wife.