by Megan Nichols | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
Praying at the altar of mowed lawnsand bursting hydrangeas, worshippingthe rumble of engines turning over, alongthe narrow row of our dead end street,I drink coffee in the matriarch neighbor’s driveway,her dogs let out like dandelion seeds.My son will be late to learn...
by Megan Nichols | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
Your faceis the last match in the bookguiding methroughthe wreckagelighting the candlesthat encircle usso that I may seehow bestto reassembleour home. Megan Nichols writes copy and takes product photographs for businesses local to her. She lives in Arkansas with her...
by Makenna Dykstra | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
///there’s a toilet in the park bathroomthat won’t stop flushing. before thewater has a chance to resolve itselfinto a mirror, centripetal forceinterrupts. humankind’s eternalsearch for vanity is underminedonly by life’s yet stronger impositionof humility. sewer pipes...
by Madeleine Tomasoa | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
CW: violent imagery i am hunched over ugly like an animal screaming without a sound a cockroach scurried away from me and threw up onto the ground he woke up one day and crashed into earth i want to see fat peel away and i admire how the flesh tries to glue itself...
by Lexi Inez | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
At the mind’s casinoSlots spin to soothe and then to stirThings up, high as jackpot dreamsPull the lever again, againMore more moreMental payout poursCoins for corner storesChoose candy or wineNot the toilet right behindThe bowl fills, the bowl spillsWater out from...
by Katy Naylor | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
cast off your past like so much dry skincome down with me to the waterloose those knots which bind you to your old painthe empty cupthe mast at your backlet me be the harbour for your second chancesfind them herein the seaweedon the rocks Katy Naylor is an office...
by Katy Naylor | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
it’s not the willow pattern platebehind cold museum glassit’s not your brother’s birthday cakewhite frosted on the pantry shelfit’s the diaphragmpulling in smoke from the ruined hallit’s the handclasped round metal five hundred volts...
by Katelyn Botsford Tucker | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
The night my father died I went to the museum to seeThe Whale.You know the museum? You must know The Whale. Its facsimile hoverssuspended byinvisible strings. It wasmy father‘s favorite.The museum.The Whale.I hate that museum.I hate The Whale. Dizzy, suspended...
by Kaisa Saarinen | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
Let me be your little moon,lunar beck, a dionean shipwreck.Take me off your orbit soon -I’ll still dream your hands around my neck. You must be sick of hearing me apologiseso exonerate me, take away my voice.Make a noose for me, I’ll follow through,praying mute and...
by Jeana Jorgensen | Sep 7, 2021 | Issue #2, Issues
My heart is a caged, battered thing,a medieval city with two sets of walls,a fortress built from stonesbearing bloody handprints,teary streaks, remindersthat barriers do two things,they exist for a reason,and they come with a cost.For now I bear the bruises,take pride...
