January 3, 2022 | Fiction
Absent Goras
Avee Chaudhuri
The Chetrams were from Trinidad and listened to Bollywood music on the weekends. They were good, hardworking people. Their kids were polite. They were not Muslims as far as their neighbors could tell, since Chetram liked Miller Lite and the daughter wore high-waisted shorts in the summer. It was not polite to inquire.
January 2, 2022 | Rejected Modern Love Essay
I no longer want to see Paris with men sixteen years older than me
Mee
The first time I went to Paris, I was seventeen and stayed with a man who was thirty-three, Sylvain.
January 1, 2022 | Fiction
One More Inch of Shadow
Tara Stillions Whitehead
Joe’s uncle bought rain barrels and fertilizer. A.J.’s dad emptied the family checking account, $300 at a time, from the Circle K where he bought cartons of cigarettes, where my brother was robbed at
Not Even Your Armenian-American Daughter
Lori Yeghiayan Friedman
I am the only enemy now.
Rumination After Informing the Vet Staff Their Panera Bread Order Was Sitting on the Counter
Kelsey Zimmerman
So Mom didn’t come with us to the grocery
store, but she insisted when a box of Grape Nuts
or Popsicles tasted off it was because we hadn’t
selected the box behind the first, that hiding
in the
The House in the Desert
Nell Smith
I walk the empty lot behind it gathering creosote to make a salve. I say empty, but that is only out of convention.
Future Pastoral/Curatorial
Katrina Smolinsky
After the earth becomes a brutalist’s wet concrete dream...
The Abstinence Card
Erik Martinez
It sat in my wallet while I made out with a guy during the “Josie and the Pussycats” movie
By Hook Or By Crook
Miss Unity
I never mixed meth with hooking. Not once. I didn’t want to ruin it! (Meth, I mean.)
Are You There, Avatar? It’s Me, The 70s
Alle C. Hall
Do you see how I did that? All that pain I brought up about my sister went right under the rug.
The Day The Billionaire Exploded
Joe Marczynski
When the first billionaire exploded I was at the drive-thru with my dad.
The Cursed Treasure of the McDaniels Kids
Tyler McAndrew
Mom couldn’t understand why we were so interested in him, the old man who shuffled through the park, waving his metal detector over the thick summer grass, digging up hub caps and toothbrushes and
Love v. Cigarettes
Courtenay S. Gray
After that, I attended his streams 24/7.
Screen Test: Ahab and the Whale
Lauren Friedlander
The whale, halter top and pigtails, flops back onto the couch with a script.
It Almost Kills Me
Preeti Vangani
...not enough steroids, / the wrong steroids...
Salt
Abby Alten Schwartz
An ancient warning, handed down as northern European folklore: “Woe to that child which when kissed on the forehead tastes salty. He is bewitched and soon must die.”
(Not) A Story About New York
Kelsey Swintek
It’s August in Manhattan when we both decide to leave. You accept a job in LA and my boyfriend packs my life in a U-Haul and drives it to our new apartment together in Pittsburgh.
When I toss
Frequent Utilizer Protocol
Eric Tran
...How to say / hello without breaking / stride...
F-Words
Mark Foss
The funeral home gave me a special calendar to keep track of the Yahrzeit until 2034, but after that I will be on my own.
A Brief Excerpt from Leigh Chadwick Is Your Favorite Poet: An Unauthorized Biography, Written and Edited by Leigh Chadwick
Leigh Chadwick
Leigh Chadwick goes into the bathroom, turns off all the lights and spins around three times while chanting, Leigh Chadwick, Leigh Chadwick, Leigh Chadwick
Act of God
Suzanne Manizza Roszak
It is a miraculous thing, this audible sun.
Owed to 3C Hair
Mya Matteo Alexice
o lion mane and petalled armore, / you sweet corona of twist & curl...