Poetry: “Fall or fly?” by Trevor Cunnington

for Bernice Gardner, may she RIP

Ringed around the rosy twilight park,
A cocoon on a leaf falls through the dark.
It lands on wet asphalt streets above the bulwark

Prose: “Archaeology,” by Ronald Fink

The ceramic Aztec mask on my wall is one of my few physical reminders of a Chilean uncle who died in exile in Mexico City almost two decades ago, two weeks after I informed him of the death of his favorite sister, my mother, some two thousand miles away. The other reminders are fading images […]

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

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