by Sandra Fees everything comes to an end like an exhausted star dangling from winter’s throat. look at you now. who would know you—supergiant of joy and boldness— are in your death throes. don’t linger like a soured lover. scatter. be quick about it.       Sandra Fees has been published in SWWIM, Nimrod,… [Read More]

by Anika Somaia   New Delhi, India: I am in Sarojini Nagar market, where the free space around me shrinks from little to none within seconds. I navigate narrow lanes flooded with people that look like me, and my decision to wear open-toed shoes is one I quickly come to regret. I’m nudged from both… [Read More]

by Yaccaira Salvatierra In most cities, you can hear us at night. Our bodies, without our shadows, cannot be seen. Our skateboards tremble & staccato on concrete & asphalt. You can hear the cadence of searching. We move beneath security cameras. There are a lot of eyes looking for us. Paranoia has set its eyes… [Read More]

by Ian U. Lockaby with Jean Valentine and Poochie Lee C. on the porch through the veil of green rain, its careen off the bayou beyond her as she speaks with Tony, out of sight—in the soft reek of swamp-swallowed figs—from where I stand, in the dark kitchen, and to where the blackout has travelled… [Read More]

by Robert Osborne Martin, the neighborhood black cat, was originally named Sambo. Nelson knows this because some of the younger kids still call the cat by that name. They yell in the street under a late March sun. If Nelson is around inspecting his gutters, or scouting out locations on his property for the new… [Read More]

by Morgan Hamill this is not // what I’d hoped // for a sudden lack of limb feet hot, thick // in a summer basement // play about a girl   time-traveling during // her own mastectomy just prior // to her time of death.  // This is not // what she’d planned for, this //… [Read More]

by Ashleigh Albrechtsen When COVID-19 barreled to Utah in March of 2020, the material experience of my body and its response to the outside world transformed. Though I remained safe in my home, the anxiety I experienced felt nonetheless like I was hooked to an intravenous tube that coursed icy currents through my capillaries. Maintaining… [Read More]

by Chris Crowder   My God, we’re too dark for a rainbow. You cower behind creation. Clouds like anvils. Nothing happens for a reason. Let me show you how everything feels. Your angels’ cheeks are too elastic. The side of a couch. I want my knuckles, your face. In the reverse, I am drowning. When… [Read More]

by Ismael Santallines   The moment I say you are beautiful you begin to fade more and more of you vanishes more of your chafing beauty draws you with it away from the reflective tissue of what we choose to see diaphanous image back to the purity of base elements like a wind that does… [Read More]

by Spencer Wise In Rockport, my mother and I were digging for littlenecks in the mudflats while her nosy boyfriend, Howie the dentist, watched from a picnic table high up on the granite bluff. We’d gone to the Lobster Trap for dinner, a famous cedar-shingle seafood shack along the coast, but of course my mother… [Read More]

by Thomas Maya She doesn’t want to tell you her story. This is easy to notice, especially with her hesitation and unease: She shakes her head from side to side as her gaze lowers to the floor. She fidgets with her fingers, her hands. She holds one in the other as if tending to an… [Read More]

by Henry Christopher why does she dream? On a certain morning, the three billy goats Gruff were on their way to a distant hillside, where the grass was especially tall, and green, and tender. She asks, “Why three billies on a hill?” Soon, she’s asking more, losing traction on the switchback glissades of her developing… [Read More]