Poetry: “Chum,” by Susan Shea

He puts himself
at the head
of the long table

in front of the
killer whale-sized

Prose: “The Storm,” by Grant Gaugash

The old man stood at the edge of the park, the curb meeting the grass behind him, and ran a hand through his graying hair. The place was destroyed. Trees lay toppled onto their sides, dirtied roots bared. Clumps of grass protruded from the earth, pivoted unnaturally towards the sky. Leaves and sawdust and acorns […]

Prose: “Modern Love,” by James O’Meara

She wanted thumbtacked 3 x 5s on her walls, plush carpets, and plenty of space. Long nights and short days, love that could drive her crazy if she let it. Soft whispers in the half-light of morning, tangled up in the sheets of a twin-sized bed, iced coffee and an omelet, shared independence. She wore […]

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: “Snow Leopard Villanelle,” by Raphael Kosek

Snow leopards are graceful animals with soft fur
the students type over and over again as well as
They live in the high rugged mountains of Tibet.

Does each word imprint like the leopard’s paw
set down in stealth on the cold white world where

Poetry: “it can sometimes does,” by Tom Pennacchini

I am looking out the window with my classical on as I ponder the rigmaroles of existence discussing such with the most fascinating person I know.
Every time I feel I’ve made a valid point or observation during my ongoing convo I like to whip off my glasses to add further emphasis
while highlighting a point that’s been made salient and to add further punctuating resonance

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: “Quarks,” by Jim Krosschell

A poet I know lives on Noyes Street.
Not Dogma Drive
where what we see
is what we get,
but a neighborhood of wavicles, oscillations, uncertainties,

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