Poetry: “La-Te-DA,” by William Heath

In Key West we go to the La-Te-Da
evenings after dinner, sip prosecco splits,
dance to live singers of varying merit,

Prose: “If Leaving Me Is Easy,” by Mike Gosalia

Me: Hey, I didn’t get the proofreading job.
Clara: Oh, I’m sorry, Bert. Keep applying, okay?
Me: Yeah, thanks. I got another interview for a college admissions essay editor. It’s in a week and a half. It’s also remote, but this one’s full-time, at least for a while…

Poetry: “April 14th One Week After Week One,” by Terry Trowbridge

Ten minutes ago lightning struck Lake Ontario.
The bolt edged the crown of a neighbour’s birch tree
then craned a hard vertical plunge over the shore cliff.

The starlings, dug into their cliffside holes,

Prose: “The Glimmering Woods,” by Richard Jacobs

One unseasonably warm Saturday in late January Val’s phone rang. He picked up the receiver and said an unsuspecting “Hello.” Carrie said, simply, “Hi.” He’d thought she had damned him by now for his silence, his necessary relinquishment. “How are you?” she asked. “Uh . . . well, I think.” He smelled roses, the scent […]

Poetry: “Strawberry Shortcake Footholds on Luggage,” by Christopher Barnes

Bustling check-in desk, suited men. Orderly queue –
duty free sake. Vexed boy humpfed away.
Eleventh hour tannoy inspirits discomfort. She lays
Japanese Red Army’s blasting cap. Oyster-white
peripheries shock to black

Poetry: “Chum,” by Susan Shea

He puts himself
at the head
of the long table

in front of the
killer whale-sized

Poetry: “Ghosts Come,” by Jane Wiseman

In the blackout storm, our wings
shear through ravages of cloud
seen only in flashes. Compassing
our trackway toward you, we wheel
into dirty weather.

Prose: “something that knows it’s dead,” by Isabel Yacura

Her body is rotting. Allison knows this, just as she knows the four chambers of the heart—two atria, two ventricles—and how to stitch a simple continuous suture. When she slices open the cadaver, y-shape, petals of flesh blooming underneath her fingers, her advisor praises her steady hands. Beneath her mask, Allison smiles. There was a […]

Poetry: “Prison Planet,” by Zack Carson

All night (when isn’t it night?) the flat fields sleep unsound,
the megacities spit and thrum with their overdrive generators,
babies shawled in naked terror howl for 24-hour shifts in test chambers.
Earth is round the way a cattle prod is round.

Electricity churns and spits, sprinting through Hell World, block after block.

Poetry: “Periodic,” by Rebecca Myers

His final breaths
served as a reminder
that dying had been kept
from me all these years: Yes,
I wept, but more
because of the ecstatic
unbraiding that accompanied
the irregular pattern
of rapid gasps and
apnea