by Tebra Mekky It was one of those nights. He already knew his feelings were only going to intensify as the night wore on and he would eventually skip work the next day. There was no use fighting it, so he simply put on his winter coat, turned off the…
by Shoshauna Shy There’s a calendar on my counter.Now all the boxes are blank.A single cup and saucer sitwhere the toaster used to be.I didn’t get to keep the table either. A stash of unopened mail fills the spacewhere the cookbooks once sat.The cookbooks that went unopened.Become a wife. It’ll…
by Sarah Carleton What if death is just us ready to burstlike a bladder primed after a long road tripor a bud so packed with sunshine it just has to bloom and here we are at the end, flush withall we’ve been given—soft six-pm skies, autumnyellows, day-long rains, endless plants,…
by Michael Mclaughlin Victorio Valdez, El Bandido, was a retired Mexican actor living in Tijuana. He had been in over forty Mexican and American films, always as the heavy. In his youth he was shot from horses, tumbled down flights of stairs, and had whiskey bottles shattered over his head….
by Reese Bentzinger 1:19, I’m watching the scenein Spirited Away where a creature with a bike in his back, decay on his breath, crawls to the bathhouse he’s got no name and no eyes, just two hollow pits begging for a bath but they won’t let him in there’s no way for him to cry, but I swear I…
18 – Innerlijk Zelfportret by Menke Biewenga I stare restlessly at the pink floor lamp beside my bed. Sometime before tomorrow, I am supposed to create “een innerlijk zelfportret”—an inner self-portrait. Why do Social Work students have to practice everything they learn on themselves first? I suppose this is one…
by Kashawn Taylor no longer can i surviveon bitter caffeine and self-hatred toppedwith old-fashioned determination sprinkleskeenly aware that my eyes lie, that whati see is / not mewhat I see is not me but i can’t helpthat sometimes eating’s a chore& i’d rather do anythingother than masticate and swallowanything else…
by Jarek Jarvis Morning—gold light saunters through the window— I wake in my old room, where the walls, once sunburst orange, lit my bed ablaze each dawn. I rose bathed in day’s nascent flame. Not a gasp of spark lingers to rouse me. The weather report beats against my door. Dishes chatter in the kitchen….
by Lyz Mancini The man was nodding out, one unlaced sneaker caught at an angle on the frame of a beat-up Chevy Camry, its door pushed wide on its hinges like a starving mouth. His eyes widened as he suddenly pitched forward, clutching a shabby blue worker’s hat to his…
by Katie Kenney At the doctor’s office the carpet cloudy,matching magazines so melancholy with weepy celebrity stories, watery wallsfor wild vines reaching to nowhere. Curled-up posters of the elderlywith your disease, so happily the mere picture of livingwith a single peppy foot inside the grave. They’re saying the secret of…