Carly Joy Miller Epistle on Desire Men in the air. Long days long days. My retainer’s tang bookends them. Sweat and showers turpentine the last kiss. To remain sweet: Apples and walnuts for breakfast. Vanilla ice cream, coax for sleep. To be pined over. Pinned. Repetition, a stigmata: I tried, then tired, of the larger […]
Brittany Micka-Foos Our Lady of Sorrows The Virgin Mary cradles her miraclein the courtyard of the Holy Cross.Automatic doors part for usand I confess: I’m not even Catholic:I’m an atheist. It’s a good hospital, you say as we passthrough the doors, past the chapel, dimmedlights and hard pews—a place to prayfor the sick or dying,not […]
Anthony Thomas Lombardi the wolf will live with the lamb it’s dark & i am listening & somethingis listening to me. i don’t whimper. i cross my chest & place my hands on the choppingblock but it’s my tongue God wants. i figured this a decent compromise the way i pick-pocket the prophets each time […]
Read More… from Anthony Thomas Lombardi – the wolf will live with the lamb
Sean Glatch Lepidoptera Mothman took my photograph in Southern Tennesseeso I fell in love with him. That’s what I told myself, anyway, to get throughthe soundless months when an empty bed was jagged ice & I needed a bodyto hold to, to thaw through. Mothman pointed his camera at me & I loved his angles, […]
James Champion Leaf Between for Riki I’m walking with you and without you.The between follows us, a wild glimmer. The sky,too, wanders whitely throughthe birch trees like an abandoned thought. Then, it’s as if the geese overhead said, “Oh,a meadow,” and let one fall feathery from their wings,golden and rippling. This meadow, this is the […]
Mandy Bach care home fish tank the repurposed wooden church pew sits perpendicularto the tank—we have to turn a full ninety to watch themglide through the clear water, a kind of half-floating.the only thing that dies faster than old peopleare fish; we place bets on which ones make it through the night.usually, the ones that […]
Anne Champion Triggered Memories: Grief When I was 15, the most beautiful boy in the worldcame to my window, throwing pebbles, asking me to come out. He’d tell me he saw what I was doing at night, peeping.After I kissed him, he told me he lost his virginity breaking into a girl’s house, raping her, […]
Aidan Daniel Roadkill Astronaut small baby stiff-bodied upside-down and on its neck, stunted little-limbed creature kit with soft fur legs stuck out like an overstuffed animal (what a way to go) side-of-the-road wide mouth crying asking, calling to skyscraper-space somebody come and find me the first man to float freely in space (the way to […]
Poetry Winner: Rose Zinnia, “Constituting Mayhem (Derealized in the CVS),” “Look (Nonbinary,” “God Wifi Earth Ogn (Nonbinary),” and “ancient Wind, Empty Skyscraper, Golden Bear (Nonbinary)” Honorable Mentions: Rennie Ament, “In America” and Heather Lang-Cassera, “Upon Knowing Swan Song as Myth” Creative Nonfiction Winner: Jodie Noel Vinson, “Self-Portrait after COVID-19” Fiction Winner: Carly Rae Zent, “The […]
Winner Jeanette Lynes, “1979” Honorable Mention: Jacques Rancourt, “Crossed Signals” Finalists: Joshua Garcia, “Self-Portrait as Three Archetypal Media Images;” torrin a. greathouse, “Bondage Device: Cross;” and Brett Hanley, “Bondage Device: Meat Hoist” Special thanks to Tim Dean and Corey Van Landingham. […]
