June 30, 2020 | Poetry
Tip Top Vacation Performance
Jordan Clark
TIP TOP VACATION PERFORMANCE
Two women velcroed a husky, mesh tank top
in order to separate the men from the boys.
Then, 20 aisles apart, mimed the crucifixion.
Words I’m akin to grasp start in
June 29, 2020 | Fiction
<3
Crystal K.
I confess my DIY rituals in high school, tiny fires fueled by crumpled notes and dried flowers from lost loves and later, gifts from my parents bought during the divorce. In the smoke, my hope conceived visions: sometimes revenge, always return. Nothing I witnessed was more than smoke
June 29, 2020 | Nonfiction
A Capricorn’s Weekly Horoscope While Her Father is Dying of Cancer
Kendra L. Vanderlip
3/31: The day is young. Dress smart today Capricorn, big things on the horizon. When standing in front of new people, don’t forget to smile. People are drawn to you, but you forget to drop your
June 28, 2020 | Rejected Modern Love Essay
The Lion & the Little Boy
Deborah E. Kennedy
My mother mentioned Darren to me only once. I was in college by then.
Three Poems
Alex Bernstein
"Today I Promise," "Rubric for Asparagus," and "My Life"
What Was Left Was Ours
Linnie Greene
Why bother with the pretense of health or ambition, when the world was ending and there were still snacks, drinks, trysts with another unwashed neighbor?
Down Stacks
Rose Himber Howse
Some days, Luke told me it hurt to sit down. Those days we played in the woods.
We took tarps and string from the shed to make tents between trees. We stole pennies and nickels from the house, put
Melodrama, Lorde
Garrett Pletcher
Like so many gays around the world, I remember exactly where I was when Lorde dropped “Green Light”, the first song from her 2017 instant classic Melodrama. I was in my car, on my way to work. But that’s not really all of it.
All of Us Have It
Crow Jonah Norlander
Everything that could have possibly budged already had, anything neglectable was long ago done so.
Three Smallies
Zac Smith
The guy on the podcast had cancer, he was dying –every day he was dying a little bit more – and he was reflecting on being a literary agent.
Ghost
Danielle Chelosky
My writing professor said to me that in order to get better, you had to dismantle the person you were, because that person was killing you. I kept wondering: Why did a killer love me?
Everyday, Mama Reburied the Pig
Connor Goodwin
Mama was a truck. A Ford Bronco, to be exact.
HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I
J. A. Hall
I attribute my apostasy to Michael Jackson’s HIStory
Rainbows in Alabama
Steve Comstock
"Six fine fish in that dirty pond! They're gonna die there anyway!" he told me. "They're gonna suffocate on all that mud."
Crossing the Divide: Cycling, romance and reckoning in the Canadian Rockies
Kelly Huffman
My trip had begun in Seattle, where the past few years had served up one setback after the next. I had been cut loose by my latest not-quite-boyfriend.
Fight Report
Gabriel Smith
Twenty seven notes Gabriel Smith took at Bethnal Bust Up, York Hall, London, March 7th
If boxing is a sport, then it is the most tragic of all sports because more than any human activity it
Three Women I Almost Loved
Rebecca Fishow
She said: in my home, I want to feel at home. I want to feel as though I am swaddled in blanket, as though the walls pump food right to my gut. I water the plants, all seven or eight, some dying. I feed the cat
Drop Out
Hannah Carpino
You don’t see her for several years after that, minus a brief and sweet span of days that following summer, in your usual place. You play Bob Dylan’s Mama, You Been on My Mind squeezed on a piano bench with her.
Composite Characters
Erika Veurink
The first time I met Courtney, she told me she loved my ballet flats. We were wearing the same $14.99 shoes. She hated her curly hair and middle name and Democrats.
Gym Encounter
David Hii
Your gym is perhaps your favorite thing about Hattiesburg. Your student budget is tight, but you’ll manage to eek out thirty a month somehow—you have for the last three years.
In Isolation, I Am Morphing
Lyndsey C. Fox
The day before isolation, I celebrate my birthday, unwed, the first of its kind in my adult life, my divorce from a great man with whom I shared an OK eleven years, finalized by way of a $250 internet
Pluck
Adam Hughes
I’d spend the night there on Saturday nights, get up Sunday morning and drive to my church and preach. I didn’t find God because I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me but I didn’t find him either.




