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 […]

Prose: “Djinns of the River,” by Jordan Gabriel

I came to Imlil to return to myself, to put an end to the nervous estrangement that had taken hold of me in the windless dust of Marrakech. That which cannot be seen nor grasped, and thus cannot be proven, is there nonetheless. I swear it. It’s as if the whole city sucks and exsufflates […]

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 […]

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 […]

Prose: “Miss December,” by Dominic VIti

In the winter of XXXX’s seventeenth year, bone cancer put her beloved mother to rest under the hospital bed’s white sheets, the same winter her dog chased a rabbit into the woods and never came home, froze to death in the night’s snow, a comforter that only brought more cold, so quick and thick the […]

Prose: “Don’t Be Afraid to Forget,” by Griffin Gudaitis

While I was at Dave’s wake, all I could think about was the last time he got laid. Since graduation, he’d been on three or four dates, but none of them really went anywhere. This thought just cropped up in my mind, not that it brought me any particular joy, but seeing that it wasn’t […]

Prose: “Walter,” by Gary Kimball

The first time I saw Walter he was coming out of building across the street from my office. He looked nervous, the way he swung his head around one way and then the other as he locked the door and hurried up the sidewalk, pushing long, black strands of hair off his face and glancing […]

Prose: “The Oneironautics Conference,” by Nemo Arator

The Oneironautics Conference was scheduled to begin at eight o’clock Saturday morning in a city two hundred miles north of the town where I lived. So Friday night after work I set out, driving until I became too tired, then turned onto a dirt road and parked in the approach to a farmer’s field. I […]

Prose: “Yellow Shift,” by Mary Lewis

I couldn’t believe they’d put all of us into this cramped basement room with stone walls and tiny windows too high to see out of, but maybe that was part of the therapy. A dozen people looked up from their chairs at Dr. Ward who stood on this little platform, jerking his arms like some sci-fi […]