By Jimmy Pappas (This poem contains suicide.) Everyone owed me a call.That’s what she wrote,her suicide note of sortsposted on a sticky padattached to a boxof Christmas presentsshe never mailed out. That’s how it all works,isn’t it? We owe each otherthings: the book we borrowedlong ago that we kept holding…
By James Croal Jackson we again drink through tuesdayon a rooftop around the corner ofwhere we grew up watching trafficnearly crash into every other carat rush hour there’s no room forinterpretation at 6 pm everyonecomes home from work crankythis fucked economy of wakingto pay bills a sunrise for the rich
By Brittany L. McCann (This story contains disordered eating.) The numbers on the digital scale blur through my watery eyes as the Birthday Song is belted out in a possible worst signing voice contest down the hall. I wipe the back of my arm across my eyes and stare down…
By Jason Weiland You can almost make out the color of my 1970 AMC Gremlin and the patina of the sun-baked paint combining into a shade that can only be described as puke-yellow. I’m stuck here and haven’t moved since dawn. Car’s pointed west, sure enough. A stretch of Route 66…
By Sam Grieve Honeymouth The first climb he suggests starts on the Pipe Track. She meets him near the lower cable station. This is before the cable car is redone, before the city reintroduces itself to the world. The old cable car is a rectangular, white box. A thousand feet…
By Phibby Venable An angel was perched delicately on the straight back chair in the corner, but everyone pretended not to see her. At least it appeared that way to fifteen – year old Katie, who couldn’t take her eyes off the golden wings and slim figure. “Mama, don’t you…
By Hannah Meade My fiancé, Brian, died exactly five years ago today. Five whole years have already passed and still, I feel the heart-wrenching sadness I felt on the day he died. I find myself snuggling back up in my grey sheets, wanting a few more minutes of peace before…
By Olivia L. Casey My scales too heavy now for me to rise.Scales jabbed tightly in my many achesBraided up in agony, I lie. I lift a wing and loose a weakened cryFor I have found a body too weak to wakeThe heavy scales I carry at sunrise. Anxious eyes…
By Seth Pierce (This poem contains reference to self-harm.) Mr. and Mrs. Mad’sMalcontent attitude is a lucid illusion of personal contemptA cover-up to an elusive getaway for attentionPlaying into the conviction of self-deprivation Starving hot-cold souls of artists and philosophers refusing to share anything but pain, In order to gain anything…
By Anikah Burge It started out like any typical day would for me. As Mama made lunch in the next room, I watched the world through the only window I was allowed to look through. I never grew tired of the view. We lived next to and across from many…