by Miriam Balanescu Their anniversary at Primrose Hill – 8:32pm. A pin-prick star to sit beside its moon, that (moon) plate punctured into coppering blue. (The moon is a gape, or an a…
by Andrew Reichard The electric glider pulsed down green and yellow farming fields and silvopasture, Franz clinging to the catchstrap with one hand and the camera with the other. He’d…
by Stephanie Valente Dad’s girlfriend lets us stay up late. Dad’s girlfriend takes us to the mall and drops us off two blocks early. She never waits. Dad’s girlfriend bought us dark b…
by Ken Cormier Music school hallway, practice rooms all around: ahead, behind, above, below. Head full of headphones, hands full of microphone and audio recorder, sneakers too dead to…
by Christopher Gonzalez My mom stabs coin-sized pockets into a pork shoulder. This allows vinegar to swish through the muscle fibers—like white wine in a sommelier’s mouth: in, …
by Phoebe Reeves-Murray Matter and energy cannot be destroyed. That’s the First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy can be changed, moved, controlled, stored, or dissipated, but not created…
by Chelsea Ruxer The tower is full of bodies still sleeping. A staircase winds through its center, a steep corkscrew of a spine. It felt like dreaming when I crept down it. I started …
by Dan Crawley Clara shuffles by cookie-cutter tract homes to the corner and then up the boulevard toward a convenience store. There she’ll buy her candy bar for the day. Where the si…
by Jerrod Schwarz I watch the barista throw a trout over the sandbag wall. News crews splash by, pointing their cameras at a dead octopus hanging from the adjacent McDonald’s sign. I check F…
by David Clager It was a hit that first and only night when he wore it to the party and everyone that didn’t even know him didn’t care since the visor hid his face anyway, and so they…
by Tayden Bundy A farmer found the girl strung up in a cottonwood three weeks after she had gone missing. The chain around her neck had been taken from the schoolyard, stripped from t…
by Ahimaz Rajessh A window forks into a door at a bar in Felicity called Codified wherein some codes of life in concert hinge and some other codes not in concert unhinge. Where one wo…
by Christina Dalcher She keeps pieces of past and would-be lovers in jelly jars, crowded on dusty shelves in the root cellar under her front porch. Johnny’s tongue floating in a brine…
by Justin Holliday At the coffee shop I see him turning the page of a book. I don’t read the title but stare at his forearm, adorned with ink vines snaking up to his bicep. His black …
by Steve Carr Sunlight sparkled on the glass jar that lay on its side in white sand. Inside it, Itsy opened her bright blue eyes, yawned, and stretched. The jar was long enough for he…
by Bear Kosik They wore pre-Goth clothes, were confused by hair care products, and hung out in the Gilman coffee shop. They were pretty pleased they weren’t in Iowa, but not completel…
by Richard Knights A man named Skops poured me into his own mouth. I burnt all the way down. I took the fervour that made his pupils shrink and the whites grow, I took his single deep…