by E. M. Tran The first day of filming Big Fat Losers’ fifteenth season, showrunners drove the contestants to Malibu in a chartered bus. A stage and audience bleachers had been set up on the beach. They were corralled into the hastily constructed green room with tables of food for the crew and cast. Minh ate… [Read More]

by Marlena Williams The horses were still dying when my dad and I visited Santa Anita. It started in 2019, when thirty-seven horses died at the famed Southern California track in a single year. Most notably, the Breeder’s Cup champion Battle of Midway was euthanized after a severe break in his hind pastern, the area in… [Read More]

by Mariah Rigg First Length We stand, toes curled around the rough edge of the deck, waiting for Coach King’s whistle. It is 6 a.m. and February on Oʻahu. It is about to rain. Our suits cling to our bodies, wet from the morning water polo practice. Above us, our high school’s gymnasium looms. Ready?  Coach… [Read More]

by Abigail E. Sims I ride in from the desert.  Creosote sticks to my boots, the oil-slick smell of the last gas station still lingering on my hair. Hungry, tired, resentfully aching for the sound of small talk thanks to a broken radio in the old truck. The road stretches out behind and ahead, the same… [Read More]

by Ayotola Tehingbola I remember the first time we had sex. Or tried to. It was eleven years ago, at his studio apartment in Manchester. I was twenty-nine, a broke graduate student who flew to another continent to spend two months with someone who might or might not like her. On my first night there, after… [Read More]

by Aya Moret Aliyah’s hands are covered in shit but she doesn’t care. She’s been at this for twenty-minutes, plunging away, getting more violent with each thrust. The toilet gurgles as she peels the rubber cup away from the orifice it has sealed off. Brown water isn’t supposed to splash. But splash it does, and… [Read More]

by Victoria Hulbert My husband sits across from me in the living room next to his boyfriend. They’ve suggested Go Kart World, that sad racetrack off the 405, and I’ve agreed because I know the kids will love it. It’s eleven on a Saturday morning. My husband’s boyfriend has made us coffee from the beans he… [Read More]

by Sacha Bissonnette Author’s note: The piece blends some of my experience with some fictional creative takes. If I must label it, it’s somewhere between very creative nonfiction and fiction, loosely based on my recent observations and conversations while traveling with friends that are far from a place called home. When Javier’s fingers run along… [Read More]

by Patrick Kindig Scientific American, 6 Oct. 2022 Patrick Kindig is assistant professor of English at Tarleton State University. He is the author of the chapbook all the catholic gods (Seven Kitchens Press 2019) and the micro-chapbook Dry Spell (Porkbelly Press 2016) as well as the academic monograph Fascination: Trance, Enchantment, and American Modernity (Louisiana State… [Read More]

by Irene Villaseñor *Your Rivulet Silhouette is in 04 degrees of Delinquenting Pisces  Due to being on the tenth houseplant cusp (MIDHEAVEN), you are very sensitive to your own swallowing, so other perfectionists’ felonies become your felonies. Try to avoid the most negative of perfectionists because your terrors’ desires to empathize with them will make… [Read More]

by Chelsea Dingman Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, won the National Poetry Series (UGA Press, 2017). Her second book, through a small ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (UGA Press, 2020). Her third collection I, Divided, is forthcoming from LSU Press in the November 2023. She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have… [Read More]

by Grace Holtzclaw Gargoyle raptor cathedral  Roquefort rot cloche Hôtel de Médicis Room 27  Cold cut crystal Caves of Tattinger Plumes of perfumes and opium  Don’t you love her madly When she’s strung out On the floor Grace Holtzclaw is a music journalist based in Los Angeles. Her poetry has been featured in the Los Angeles… [Read More]