Tagert Ellis Westside Friendship House She had the most igneous arms, seriously, she could lift over forty pounds, her arms were Gaulish, they told tales of glory. She’s the reason I took the job at the Westside Friendship House. I wanted this woman with the mutual arms. The Westside Friendship House was originally founded to […]
James Yu White Rice I decided we were no longer newlyweds after Molly stopped eating rice. It was my turn to cook, and I made a fermented soybean stew, spicy – the way she liked it. I set out the sides, things bought at the Korean grocery store in Beaverton: two types of kimchi, marinated […]
Caitlin McGuire The Radium Girl’s Undark I They invented watches for us, the boys they sent to die. Belted green-glowing clocks around our wrists, light enough to tell the time and dark enough to keep us hidden in the mired trenches and the green-glowing pools we washed in when our heads and skins had turned […]
Gabrielle Hovendon Eat This Heart After the rain refused to fall, after the jackrabbits came on like a plague, after the wheat and alfalfa died before they could cast a shadow, my father became a captain going down with his ship. He drove our spindly cattle from the pasture in Cushing down to the Broken […]
Sarah Giragosian Mummified Baboon, Unburied When they come for me, they come with shovels,augers and picks. A cloth still holds dermisto bone, but barely, and when they raise mefrom an oven of hot sands to daylight,I’m a dazzlement of husk. They lay outmy face, my hips, the undeveloped stripof my spine, all turned to anthracite […]
Read More… from Sarah Giragosian – Mummified Baboon, Unburied, The Queer Creatures that Rise at Dusk
J. P. Grasser Statutes with a line by Justice We ingest the photographs of a Tanzanian lake so reflective, so salty, that birds crash and bleedunderwater and are calcified, no ossified, and turn up as stone animals. We know the one about showingMedusa the mirror. We have heard about avocados the size of seedless watermelons. […]
C. Dylan Bassett Act SCENE.This is the scene in which the devil is played by one woman and one man. First, it is very clear. God may or may not exist, says the man. The woman seems to be sleeping. She wears a white hospital gown. A voice enters but is not responded to. […]
Hannah Loeb July Valentin, can youtake your hands off your earsand see how the nice ladies are making youa swimming pool? Madame is weary. Her charge humsand stands on his toes, which we assumemeans he is afraid of water –but still she strips himdown to his makeshift diaper,a miniscule pink peniscaught between two layers of […]
Javier Zamora El Chillón Means Crybaby All I was was a chillón.Neighbors lined up against our fencewhile the nurse checked for fever.Mamá Pati called me her ear’s fruit fly.Backyard mangos begged god,¡Callá este chillón diosmío!This is what Abuelita tells me. She says everyone brushed ash-toothpastewith horsehair toothbrushes, thatMamá Pati had a baker’s sleep schedule,that before […]
Read More… from Javier Zamora – El Chillón Means Crybaby, Pump Water from the Well
Katie Moulton Getting in at the Dead Dad Club There will be a password. It’s the pet namehe stopped calling youthe second time you emptiedyour little yellow bucket over the lip of the tub. You were two. You looked himstraight in the eye. You did itanyway. In the first dark vestibulethey will stamp your soft […]
Read More… from Katie Moulton – Getting in at the Dead Dad Club
