Category: Issue 6
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The Landlord by Peace Adzo Medie
“Asanka,” sneered Emma’s landlord, his bony frame planted in front of the staircase that led to her apartment. It was dawn and she had just returned from walking with her friend, Martin, to the bus stop. He had tutored her throughout the night, in preparation for the entrance exam that she would take in a…
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Lipochrome by Nathan Poole
It did not go away—as everyone said it would. At nine months Ida was diagnosed with an obscure disorder. It was thought to be caused by an infection in the eyes at birth…
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TWO POEMS by Patrick Rosal
UPTOWN ODE THAT ENDS ON AN ODE TO THE MACHETE What happens when me and Willie run into each other on a Wednesday night in Brooklyn? He asks, “Where we going?”
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Singing Backup by Jason Kapcala
“Drinks,” Muzzie says. “You, me, and Chen—a celebration in Dizzy’s memory. Not a drinking party.” He won’t go that far with it—but Kev knows that though he never went to college, never set foot in a frat house, Muzzie holds a pretty clear definition of what a drinking party entails: keg stands and beer pong…
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TWO POEMS by Joy Ladin
EARLY MORNING FLIGHT Half-empty plane, hot black coffee – it takes so many people to keep my body soaring. I must be important, or at least not dead, and my not being dead must matter, or it wouldn’t be so sunny…
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LIGHT INSTALLATION AT THE HILTON by Iva Ticic
there are galaxies above what used to be the soft spots at the top of our heads we elongate our necks at an angle trying to take in all that neon-filled fullness of the light-splattered cosmos
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TWO POEMS by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
DEAR AMERICA I pick you up & you are a child made of longing clasped to my neck. Iridescent, lovely, your inestimable tantrums, I carry you back & forth from the underworlds where your giggles echo, grow into howls.
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BREATH MEMORY [BREATH ALPHABET] by Cory Hutchinson-Reuss
Zero degrees again. Midwest winters confuse loving with not leaving. Yes we are made of drifts. Yes we are made of degrees on a map of discontent. [Aluminum breath, breath of absence and alchemy, Breath of blood history, breath of aromatic bitters]
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TREES by David Lawrence
The log that fell into the river went for a long swim into a hidden country where logs were the dominant culture and the trees wept as they saw their barky cousins floating home.
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BIRTHDAY by Lauren Hilger
On a stone wall, no one around I stole my mom’s mink stole I stare the doe in the face self-reflection in a lap pool March, my month, cold I want this to be the last awful cake white on white of winter
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Reprise by Kathleen Hellen
Reflex. Automatic. My son with that look when I slapped him. Something in the genes, the violence of pathways reenacting: biologies of caterwaul of bottle-fights of fists into the wall. I saw Mother with her twin colossals jug-drunk dancing jigs.
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PERSISTENT DESIGN by Nate Pritts
Wasps keep circling the shutters, long stalks of grass dangling from thin back legs, and when they crawl between the slats into the small dark, they bring their greeny materials with them. There is nothing here you can’t leave.