Nonfiction from Kristen M. Ploetz
Pilgrimage “The number one thing that’s most similar among the different pilgrims on these different journeys in these different faiths is they’re all searching. It’s that they no longer want to just passively accept the religion, they want to be active in deciding what they believe.” –Nicola Menzie, The Christian Post JERUSALEM. Mecca. Char Dham. […]
Poetry from Lisa Folkmire
Suburbia The neighbor boy has hot boxed in his duct-taped Chevy again. The smell seeps through the window screen just as the whirrs of the highway envelop our home. Tires speeding past unfilled potholes, broken glass bottles, hidden cop cars. Across the street, four wheels stalled in the drive. Windows cracking now, they’re coming up […]
Two Poems from Lindsey Gilbert
Whodunit House Two are striking: grandfather and mantel. The old clock rectifies the new clock’s brain. They’ll be bashing it out if we don’t intervene. We are the constable. Take out your notebook. Under this shade is a lamp with a switch: three clicks for full brightness. Find out where it’s going. Two fans: ceiling […]
Fiction from Matthew Serback
You’re Telling Me Pro Wrestling Isn’t Real? (Part XVII) “And what you see before you is the greatest example of evolution that you will ever see.” – Triple H YOU HAD LEFT me there—all scrambled and intertwined with the wires of your television. There were black wires with green tips and white wires with blue […]
Three Fictions from Martin Keaveney
. Carcass Dead carcass sinks. We watch. Dragonfly passes. Old, worn, out. Out, worn, old. This is where it ends, the trees begin, the heat begins. This is where it began, where it ends. We don’t move through generations, don’t love through generations. Not like the boggy mess, twenty million in the ground. Use rings […]
Nonfiction from Jericho Parms
Mummy AS A GIRL, I wrapped my mother’s resting body. Gathering jackets from the hall closet, scarves from her drawers, I lay them across her breast and snug around her torso. I reached for the plaid Irish blanket she kept on the futon and the orange afghan draped on a nearby rocking chair and covered […]
Three Poems from wren james
grandma’s house folded palms dance on the hood of the car. drive up to the attic and pull out the sun, drag it out of the house hold it like a host. i give it to you to swallow. it’s fine when we’re together. it drips out your eyes. it sounds out your mouth, but […]
Fiction from Elias Keller
Must Be the Location I JUST LOST another tenant: that’s five in as many years. Vicky’s Pet Shop, Shaya’s Healing Stones & Crystals, Alana’s Judaica Boutique, Mimi’s Party Supplies, Lisa’s Sports & Fitness—all out of business. But stores close all the time, for good reasons beyond anyone’s control: the economy, competition from big-boxes and online […]
Poetry from Tyler Atwood
another dream about real life I think I look in the mirror & see fading light in the window of the mobile home my father looks across the frozen hayfield maybe if they had made it to spring maybe holes in a shabby pair of Dickies palms blackened by newsprint ice-filled cooler b/c there’s no […]
Nonfiction from Sara Khayat
Spinal Fusion 1. Count backwards from one hundred. Ninety-nine Ninety-eight Ninety… 2. Bend over, she said, touch your toes. Doctor ran her hand along my spine and shrieked. Eleven years of a lifetime summed up by pencil-marks. Mother read me hospital-bedside literature. 3. Eyes open to see Brother talking with doctors. Years of IV’s dripped […]
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