by Molly Reid When the doe settles in front of the cottage, Marilyn tries not to attach too much meaning to it. The doe has the tags and collar of one of her father’s. Big plastic earrings with the number 63 in blocky black type. The animal first steps around the big oak at… [Read More]
Witness Magazine
An Egg Begets an Egg
by Justin Noga He’d been a cop, once upon a physical condition. In full cop regalia, he could do squats for six hours at a time whilst an egg hardboiled up his ass, snug and uncracking. Were it to crack, the Squad required six more hours of squats. It could be done, the Squad said…. [Read More]
We Were There
by Cleo Qian We met at a summer party. What struck me first were his ankles, visible underneath the frayed hem of his jeans, which were straight-cut and unusually short. They stopped right above his ankle bone. It would have looked like they were clothes he’d outgrown, except somehow, the length on those jeans… [Read More]
After She Reads the Court Records
by Lauren Erin O’Brien Lauren Erin O’Brien is from Massachusetts. She recently graduated from the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine where she concentrated in hybrid and experimental writing. Lauren was the recipient of the 2018 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction from Bellevue Literary Review and was a finalist for… [Read More]
Sad Grownups
by Amy Stuber Childhood geniuses level out. They become sad grownups. At least that’s what had happened to Odon and his friend Mac. They’d met in fifth grade where during the first week of school, one hamster killed his cage-mate, and they’d all stood around the garden at the edge of the playground while… [Read More]
Broom Closet
by Rebecca Townley I am in here but I am not crazy. This is not for lack of effort. I have tried over and over again to get crazy with no result. This includes numerous adjustments to my behavior that went entirely unheeded within the Company no matter how outrageous. I recognize that my… [Read More]
The Anthropocene
by Adrie Rose First there is my son, who says, again, I will be dead in ten years. No, no, I say, that’s not what I said. He is seven. By the beginning of August, the calendula, the chamomile give up early, brown pulp instead of blossoms. He finds a praying mantis as long as… [Read More]
Ariel
by Maureen Langloss after the Sylvia Plath poem of the same title When the bumper of a car going forty miles per hour hits the hip of a five-year-old moving slow, she does not drop under the tires. She is not crushed. She flies, sails. A perfect arc over the wide eyes of the… [Read More]
School of the Americas*
by Eric Morales-Franceschini it is not as if bones speak in the tongue of manuals or as if every testament is written in the bible for what would this life be, if at last we could name our desires hear the chorus of the disappeared indeed, what would this life be, if the dead were… [Read More]
Vol. XXXIII No. 3 – Fall/Winter 2020
A Note on This Issue Poetry Christopher Citro, The New Avenues the Only Avenues We Have* Eric Morales-Franceschini, School of the Americas Lance Larsen, Sympathetic Fallacy Angelo Ligori, The Shaft Lauren Erin O’Brien, After She Reads the Court Records Adrie Rose, The Anthropocene* Aaron Samuels, Breakfast Mike White, Patients Jane Zwart, Night Class* Fiction… [Read More]
The Flicker
by Katie Kalahan Lolo had been talking for an hour straight when I realized she wasn’t going to spend the night with me. According to Lolo I was only in Palm Springs for the photoshoot, but according to me, I had extended the trip because Lolo invited me. Because her wife was out of town…. [Read More]
Fade from Red
by Andrea B. When you are infected with an incurable, transferable disease, your future turns to red. From the gray haze of the unknown to the definite destiny of the scarlet sores. / A red line of text cuts across the black columns of the blood test results, which are marked as Final. Permanent. Unchanged… [Read More]