mending mettle (Selena Langer)
When the scratching starts at the window screen, I know it is the raccoons, and that their long claws are raking through each screened-in square, drawing holes until their noses can poke through, and I know that they’ll push and push and push until they’re there, in the room with me, and I can picture…
A eulogy for Psittacosaurus, devoured by Deinonychus in the Colossal Book of Dinosaurs (Brenden Layte)
I was six when I first saw you. You were eating, your body nestled into a thicket the same color as your emerald skin. You ate deliberately, tearing leaves from branches and swallowing them whole so they could be ground down by the stones I’d just learned were in your stomach. I wonder what you…
We and Him (Amruta GAiki)
We start off well. We don’t know him and he doesn’t know any of us. The year progresses and we descend into indifference. We tolerate him by not paying him enough attention. We are lowkey impressed when he tells us that some lower castes in Telangana have last names ending with -aiah. We know his…
3/2″ and 30 lbs (Samir Sirk Morató)
You’re watching Attack of the Killer Shrews when your dead classmate raps on the window. It’s late. You’re awake, a bowl of buttered popcorn in your lap, a quilt around your shoulders, snowy new pajamas hugging your limbs, and that skeletal face is at the window again. For a heartbeat, you consider ignoring him. The…
Behind Glass (Michael Wheaton)
The outside of the one-building campus at my community college is half windows. It’s three-floors tall and shaped in a U, a courtyard in the middle surrounded by large panes of glass that wall off one side of each classroom. The blinds are shut by default. On most days, anyone can figure out which classroom…
Closer to god, or whatever (Shelby Hinte)
5:20 a.m.—My alarm goes off, and before I place the sound to the device, my body is in motion to stop it—torso raises, feet hit the ground, walking across the room where I keep my phone so I will not be inclined to hit snooze and will instead keep forward momentum out the bedroom to…
The Artists I Knew (Marin Kosut)
The artist who made a square helmet out of plywood that looked like a 1960s robot head and wore it to basketball courts and tried to join pick-up games while his girlfriend filmed. The artist who secretly lived in her studio, peed in a plastic five-gallon bucket and washed her bras in the bucket. The…
Grounds (Jason M. Thornberry)
Today, I YouTubed “How to Tie a Noose.” My mother hates me. She said so. I barely make over minimum wage—even after getting a master’s degree. I live next door to an apocalyptically loud construction site operating thirteen hours a day, six days a week. My one-bedroom apartment is beneath a barking dog. I can’t…
Kesha (Miss Unity)
Me and Priscilla and Lulu at the — Hotel. Nashville. Christmas Day. The place is a dive but they offer a goldfish service, meaning you can get a fishbowl delivered to your room with live goldfish swimming around in it. We huddle around the fishbowl and take group selfies in our lingerie. The fish swim…
You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi! (Megan Williams)
M 62 USA wants to trade Snapchats. M 42 USA asks what I’m wearing so he can tell me how best to remove it. M 29 USA wonders if I had an orgasm when I was raped. M 23 USA demands I cut all that long pretty hair off, just slink into the kitchen, moonlight…
Ode to Loki, or An Absurd Glorification of Existential Loneliness (Gabriela Denise Frank)
I want to be his only lover left alive. I love the whole unearthly package: dead-set predator eyes,matted black mullet, ten-foot-tall golden ibex horns, slender and ridiculous. His helmet, his chiseled jaw, his skin-tight leather jumpsuit with a tab collar, dyed envy green. I’ve always had a soft spot for bad boys who [make me]…
CONTROL FREAKS (Elizabeth Burch-Hudson)
‘member like in 2012/2013 when there was a huge gatsby resurgence and everyone (the popular kids) was throwing gatsby or like roaring 20s inspired parties i don’t even think i ever went to one because i never got invited but i remember seeing lots of ‘em on instagram (back when it only did heavily filtered…
Hurricane Ian (Hurley Winkler)
Am I supposed to fill the bathtub before the storm? Dad would know the answer, but I don’t want to ask. He’s already in my head, contradicting himself, reminding me that water attracts lightning, that I’ll need something besides my stockpile of Zephyrhills if I lose running water, something to fill a pot with and…
Reflux (Josh Olsen)
I sent my mother a picture of my dinner—a grilled New York strip, topped with sautéed mushrooms and blue cheese crumbles, on a bed of spring greens, with a side of rosemary garlic potatoes—something I didn’t do with anyone but her. Food was one of the primary points of conversation between her, my grandmother and…
Nobody Learns Shit (Tyler Dempsey)
For five months I’m a Park Ranger. The other seven, I struggle. This winter, I work a Daycare/Preschool/Lumber Store. Just kidding. -30. The American-measurement at 63̊ North this morning. “Dry Cabin” sounds better than “3rd World.” So, that’s where I tell people I live. Two heat sources. No running water. Five minutes getting into enough…
A Collection of Losses (Laura Gill)
On Miami Beach, people look for lost items—they walk with metal detectors searching for rings, bracelets, and buckles. They move the device from one side to the next, down and back along the shore, skimming the edges of the sand. Rarely do they find anything worth very much; and yet, they have all kinds of…
Probably thinking the same thing (Tyler Dempsey)
Nationally-ranked in cross-country. One of the few non-Whites in any National Park. Leg muscles the envy of gazelles. Tall, broad-shouldered. Each body-part clearly separate from what it’s attached to. It’s very exciting. There’s a joke: Alaskan women are the toughest young men I’ve met. She fixes gross pasta. I crack a beer. Reading a note,…
Women I’ve Dated Whose mothers Have Died And The Horrible Things That’ve Happened To Them In The Aftermath Of Those Deaths (Tex Gresham)
1Two mothers.One burned, the other vomit-choked.The burned one was a crime that went uninvestigated. The other was accidental suicide. 2On our first date: “My mother just died.”On our second date: “Can you take me to our old house so I can get some things?” A house blackened by fire. Mostly brittle sticks of wood.She collected…
The year we lived above badger’s island pizza (Melissa Saggerer)
The pizza delivery guy would always laugh at us, as he was delivering pizza to the upstairs apartment of a different pizza shop. That year our new year’s resolution was every time we ordered a pizza, we’d order an extra pizza to put directly into the fridge, so we’d always have leftover pizza to eat.…
Let’s Pretend We’re Married (KJ Shepherd)
The bartender caught us photographing the front door. Every reflection in a bar is two-wayed, even at the urinals, especially during townie hours. But any bartender worth his salt knows that townies would know the old local gay spot: who takes pictures of their neighborhood unless they are already becoming a stranger? Before we could…
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Rejection Letters 