Category: Issue 14
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MOTH by Cary Holladay
Augustus Gwynn: Gus Gwynn, drop-dead handsome, running on hot. When he was forty, wrecked and ruined, he was irresistible. The problem, he said, is I’m in my head all the time. Women loved that. And he always looked like he’d just killed somebody. They loved that too. So, his mother. When he was forty, they…
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TWO POEMS by Leslie Sainz
SUNDAY, WOUNDED For The Ladies in White The walls of Santa Rita swell like a capillary. Hundreds of mother-wives, dressed as doves, recite their reasons: For the steel-held. Para la malasangre. To argue on behalf of ghosts. Outside the church, men with bladed knuckles intimidate…
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THE PAYPHONE by Joy Priest
Disappeared from the landscape. Slick & black in the Tangerine Diner Where I stood to speak into the handpiece Greasy with other people’s oil & spit. Gone that day’s newspaper, boot-printed, The dog walking itself leash-in-mouth Down the small avenue, the bookstore Where I felt the train rumble past On the other side of the…
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WHITE FLAG by Leah Browning
She wanted to be like Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8, beautiful and world-weary, but it seemed that Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was more her style: half in the bag and walking around the kitchen late at night eating a cold chicken leg with the refrigerator door hanging open. She, too, had…
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INTERVIEW with Kyle Dargan
Kyle Dargan is the author of five collections of poetry: Anagnorisis (TriQuarterly/Northwestern UP, 2018). Honest Engine (University of Georgia Press, 2015), Logorrhea Dementia (University of Georgia Press, 2010), Bouquet of Hungers (University of Georgia Press, 2007) and The Listening (University of Georgia Press, 2003). He is the recipient of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and…
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TWO POEMS by Vandana Khanna
CREATION MYTH This is how the whole holy mess went down: cue the girl in tone-deaf gold, drama thick in her blood. Their love always caught in the underworld or the other world. All vendetta and Vedas. She woke from dreams silted with arrows, broken teeth, the man-smell still sharp and human on her. The…
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MIRROR ROOM, MEHRANGARH FORT by Chloe Martinez
Jodhpur, Rajasthan You live in a high fort above a blue city. The rooftops below speckled with laundry. At night the distant echoes of a hundred brass bands, a hundred weddings. The blue of the city is not quite robin’s egg, not exactly the blue of chicory. Outside the city is the desert. Don’t tell…
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SELF PORTRAIT AS A POETRY BOT by Zohar Atkins
Alumnae of the Void, we measure our loyalty in clicks and non-fungible donations. We measure our loyalty against our guilt of never being enough, never opening email. Against our guilt of never showing up, or as we say in today’s culture, making ourselves visible. Showing up, or as we say Leaving Egypt, meaning a world…
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TWO POEMS by Alfredo Aguilar
ONE WAY IN—ONE WAY OUT during the fire, i thought only of closed roads— lines of cars redirected to find another way in or out. while the mountain above them burned, a couple jumped into their water tank to save themselves. i turned on every sprinkler & placed a few on the roof. i sat…
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FOR ANDREW by Jackson Holbert
When it was too hot to smoke cigarettes we drowned ants in gasoline until they curled. Upstream, in a trailer, your mother, drunk on hand sanitizer cut with water, called each kid for pasta. It’s April. You are dying among the poplars among blueberry fields and farmhands beating chickens with pipes. When we travel the…
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FEMININITY AS A MATH PROBLEM IN AN ATTEMPT TO SOLVE FOR X by Kelly Grace Thomas
after Linette Reeman and torrin a. greathouse MATH PROBLEM The body is a betrayal you are forced to carry POSSIBLE ANSWERS Don’t say the word father OR become a slow crawl of thigh highs OR let each be your god Divide all possible solutions by Remember this…
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TWO POEMS by Benjamin Garcia
A TOAST TO THE DESTRUCTION OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH The waitress tending our party of three dips her tanned torso over the table as she grabs the menus from us men. Well, …