Search

by Mike Itaya The day of the storm, me and Ms. Wanda were gettin’ freaky deaky inside my bamboo timeshare/loveshack. Above us, the sky was turning black. I wanted to get horizontal again but Ms. Wanda wasn’t having it. Right short, she confessed Bad Boi was home from Angola Prison and I felt the wilting salad days of our afternoon delight. I was at a loss for words. Ms. Wanda was classy stuff, wore houndstooth underwear, and sometimes wore no underwear at all, and right then I knew in my heart of hearts, dollars to donuts, I’d never see her undies again. Overhead, the storm picked up. The wind buffeted rain into my face. I felt like some wind-swept loser on the news. Like a thunderclap, Ms. Wanda bolted without saying another word, without even putting on her boots. I sat there like a fool, watching love run away from me. It got gusty in that loveshack. Winds blew the door closed and opened. Closed and opened. Outside, our crimson two-seater loveseat, an anniversary gift for Ms. Wanda, took flight into the sky. Losing the dream of sittin’ in that loveseat lawn chair together (plus the $89.95 I blew on it) was that straw that broke my heart. Well, if Ms. Wanda wouldn’t have me, I didn’t want to feel anything but bad. If a hurricane blew me to hell, it would’ve been a waste of wind. If heartache was nothing but a word, it was a pretty damn big one. I was alone with Ms. Wanda’s boots (from J-Ray’s Shoe Emporium) and nothing but the days without her stretched before me. I picked up one of her boots and looked inside it, hoping for a windfall. But it just smelled as funky as I felt. There was a hole in her sole, and through it I spied Ms. Wanda disappeared into a dot, while the sky dropped buckets, and the wind played hell with our loveseat. Mike Itaya lives in southern Alabama, where he works in a library. His work appears or is forthcoming in New Orleans Review, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and Storm Cellar, among others. He studies fiction at Pacific University.

Before there were girls, there was you, us. He-Man, The X-Men. You always had the bigger collection; I, more imagination: Let’s use your mom’s yarn; let’s string a zipline so that our heroes can really fly! The best part of sleepover: pretend-play in your bathtub. Pew-pew! Pew-pew! You can’t get me, Skeletor! Soapsuds make the best defense. Pew-pew! Pew-pew! Hit me if you can, Magneto! By the time your mom called us, our hair was dry, our fingers prunes, the water cool. Ten more minutes, please! We’d get five. Then time for bed. PJs, now! I’d sleep with He-Man; you, Wolverine. Nothing’s as awesome as claws! Nuh-uh, a power sword’s so much cooler! In bed, you’d clench your masked, gloved mutant; me, my breastplated, helmeted spaceman. Lights off, gentlemen! In only nightlight, we’d whisper still, doing our best to fool your mom, trying to keep each other awake, too. Heads atop your X-Men pillows, bodies beneath your matching comforter, we’d fall asleep, warm and peaceful, in one another’s arms. Chaste We agreed to date for the summer, privately confessed we disliked sex. If, by sex, one means penetration. We chose to have none. Some say That’s cute. Pure. Oh, if only they knew—there’s more more ways than one to be intimate. Heretical. Surely, we weren’t the only couple. Little urges to do more than this: press lips, gently nibble each other’s curves. No intention to go much further. Though we liked to denude each other, studious, admiring one another’s ancient marble, neither of us thought of the other, I want to screw that sculpture. It’s a relief you’re not drawn to figures. I’m not built like a Roman warrior. Whatever we may be missing, we’re no less incomplete than those defaced, broken antiquities. Nor any less unique. The Church might’ve praised us, blessed us, claimed us as models of self-control—fruit of the Holy Spirit, yet proof of piety. Sorry to hoist your hopes, Father, but it would be blasphemous to call us Catholic. The closest we ever came to that was incense and leather, wounds from whips, collared discipline, submission. Oh, Oh, mortification! Such pleasure ended in the fall. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Jonathan Fletcher, a BIPOC writer, currently resides in New York City, where he is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in Poetry at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He has been published in Arts Alive San Antonio, The BeZine, Clips and Pages, Door is a Jar, DoubleSpeak, Flora Fiction, FlowerSong Press, fws: a journal of literature & art, Half Hour to Kill, Lone Stars, MONO., New Feathers, OneBlackBoyLikeThat Review, riverSedge, Synkroniciti, The Thing Itself, TEJASCOVIDO, Unlikely Stories Mark V, voicemail poems, Voices de la Luna, and Waco WordFest. His work has also been featured at The Briscoe Western Art Museum.

by Lindsay Vermeulen On Wednesday afternoon Elowen noticed a small, grey spot of moisture on her living room wall, a sort of lopsided heart discolouring the floral wallpaper. That’s odd, she thought, and rubbed it briskly with a tea towel. It didn’t help. If anything, the mark seemed to get slightly bigger. She left it alone and returned to her laptop. She had deadlines to meet. By Thursday morning, the spot had grown to the width of her hand. It was damp to the touch, but nothing seemed to draw moisture out of it. She tried a towel again, then the hair dryer, to no effect. She spent her evening on the phone comforting a friend, and the call lasted into the wee hours of the morning. She sat with her back to the wall so she wouldn’t have to see the spot. On Friday, her parents were coming for dinner. She cooked up a feast: coconut curry, homemade naan, pickled vegetables, a chocolate rosemary tart. She stared at the spot on the wall, which had grown to roughly the size of a dinner plate. Her guests were coming in fifteen minutes, so she hung a painting over it—a still life of pomegranates. “Are you okay?” her parents asked over cups of tea from her antique china set, looking with concern at Elowen’s tired eyes, her faintly trembling hands. “Never better!” she said brightly, serving up the tart. “Just up late chatting with friends.” Her mother’s sharp eye spotted a damp shadow creeping out from underneath the frame of the painting. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing. “Oh, nothing!” said Elowen. “Just a little moisture, but it’s getting better. Would you like some more tea?” On Saturday morning, she decided to take the painting down, to prevent it from getting damaged. By the end of the day, the spot had grown so large it covered a good third of the wall. She began to worry about whether it was safe to use the electricity—was there wiring on the other side?—so she lit candles instead. There, she said as she lit the last one, very romantic. What a nice way to have dinner. She served herself some of the leftover curry, eating it cold, just in case. No more guests for a while, perhaps. On Sunday, she awoke from dreams of the ocean, but the sloshing sound of water did not fade. She checked all the taps, the washing machine, and the dishwasher, but everything seemed fine. The spot, however, was no longer a spot. Its soft greyness had engulfed the entire wall and seemed to be spreading to the ceiling. At this point, it would just be embarrassing to call a plumber. Well, I always wanted to live by the sea, she thought with a strained little laugh. Who gets to enjoy the sound of the waves this far inland? But this was not the peaceful sound of lapping waves. More of an anxious, angry sloshing. No, it sounds nice, she corrected her inner voice angrily. And she went about her day, writing a postcard to her cousin, potting a pothos cutting for a friend’s birthday, updating payment information for some recurring donations. On Monday morning, she decided not to leave her bedroom. She worked from her vanity desk with noise-cancelling headphones on to mask the sound of the water. Just to help me focus, she thought. A co-worker sent a thoughtless email and she took a deep breath, counting to ten. Time for an early lunch break, perhaps. She headed toward the fridge, passing through the living room, and a small involuntary sob escaped her lips. With a deep rumbling, the walls burst and a torrent of water poured forth, knocking Elowen to the floor. The room was flooded to capacity in moments. Lindsay Vermeulen (she/her) is a writer and editor dwelling on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, sometimes called Vancouver. She likes chocolate, afternoon tea, social justice, classical music, being outside, and heartbreakingly beautiful books.

By Alan Hanson look at you in the light of an oil lamp traditional not trad, glowing and glad, not knowing the tongue can tie one on with words like chevron or exxon or whatever, that life that we led is gone. vroom, fuck!, vroom— porno breakfast: men from Detroit with double martini breath wiping you out and naming automobiles after your ancestors. we’ll tangle hot sweat dripping pitch slicked ocean, encroach El Segundo swallows the home you grew up in the AC spitting smoke like foiled heroin. no more fillies from Florida! no more hunks from Hermosa! sheets descending ash cannot cover the love I have to give and the love I will accept I will eat sudden sinkhole gulping down the playgrounds we tumbled out of splitting our first Silver Bullet groping in the dark. and I’ll sing into your chest yes I will buzz your ache, I will burrow in your bristle as the mountains wilt— for this is all we’ve ever had and this they cannot take. and the Earth will remain, the mosquitos and cockroaches learn to breathe methane. there is no swan, there is no glove, they too will burn with the Amazon fulfillment centers but they will burn without love. Alan Hanson is a poet and amateur historian in Los Angeles. He has a cat with thumbs and rarely pays his bills on time. Google "LASD gangs." You can follow him @iluvbutts247 wherever those websites still work.

By Kat Stubing Wife wakes up at 6:00 in the morning and takes a shower. She sprays the tiled walls with Lysol foam and wipes them down while the conditioner works its magic. She dries off, gets dressed, and turns on the lights on her way out, so Husband knows it’s time to wake. Downstairs, the coffee is percolating. Wife snatches two sticky swirly straws from the island counter and places them into the sink next to an unsoaked pot and three crumby plates. She takes the bread, peanut butter and jelly out of the pantry, and sets them on the counter. She makes four sandwiches with peanut butter on each side so the jelly doesn’t make the bread soggy. She slices them diagonally. Each sandwich is wrapped in aluminum foil, then tucked into a plastic baggie with care. Wife checks her smartwatch. Picture day. Time to rouse the Children. She pops open the dishwasher, ready to throw the knife and cutting board inside, but finds that it is full of clean dishes. Wife goes upstairs and wakes the Children by opening the curtains and cooing about sunshine and a blessed new day. The Children wipe the Sleepies from their eyes. “I want Daddy,” says Daughter. Husband’s snooze alarm goes off with three knocks against the door as Wife heads back downstairs to unload yesterday’s dishes. Son arrives at the island counter, where Wife has placed two bowls, two spoons, one cereal box, and a carafe of milk. “I don’t like this kind anymore,” he says. Wife removes a different cereal box from the pantry and places it in front of him, before continuing to load the silverware drawer. “Can you stop doing that so loudly?” he asks, covering his ears. Daughter creeps down the stairs in a dinosaur onesie. “You can’t wear that to school,” says Wife. “Go put on the outfit I laid out for you.” “I don’t like that one,” she says. “Then go ask Daddy to help you pick out an outfit.” Daughter goes back up the stairs, while Son rifles through kitchen cabinets. “What do you need?” asks Wife, pivoting to loading the dishwasher with the plates left behind by late night snackers. “There’s a food drive at school,” says Son, placing a can of beans in his backpack, “if our class donates the most, we’ll win a pizza party.” “That’s for tonight’s dinner,” Wife wipes her hands on the sink towel and looks into the pantry. “Why don’t you take this instead?” she suggests, handing him a can of Spaghetti-Os. “But these are Dad’s favorite,” he hands it back. Daughter is back, still in the onesie, now with bangs she didn’t have five minutes ago. Wife sighs and checks her watch. 6:45. “Husband,” she calls up the stairs, “the Children need to leave in five minutes!” Wife returns to the kitchen, where Son has abandoned his breakfast to watch television on the couch. “Remember how I asked you to put your bowl in the sink when you’re done?” she asks him. “I forgot,” he answers, eyes glued to the screen. Wife scrubs down the unsoaked mystery pot in the sink, chipping away at the chocolate residue caked to the bottom. Husband shuffles downstairs. The Children jump up for a bear hug. “How are my little monsters doing?” he asks, kissing the top of each of their heads. Wife’s phone buzzes. Morning meeting with the board has been moved up to 8:00. Daughter wails. Son has changed the channel without her permission. “Good morning,” Husband says into Wife’s hair as he rounds her side, dropping a third sticky swirly straw into the pot she’s scrubbing, “you missed one.” The impact freckles her blouse with cocoa suds. Wife stares at her wrinkled reflection in the warm soapy water, and like a child ready for bed, she falls in. Kat Stubing was born into the sticky heat of summer and has been searching for the right words ever since. She received her BA in Media Studies from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and is a proud member of the Brooklyn Women’s Writing Group. Her poems and short stories have been published in a variety of literary magazines, including Beyond Words, Allegory Ridge, and Hare’s Paw, among others. You can find Kat online at katjoys.squarespace.com and on Twitter @katjoyst.

by David Estringel How black like night is your call for counsel to spirits, rancorous and thirsting, darkly, for the fruitless bounty of cold teats and tongue that bring the unmanned to sway in this, Hell’s business. Curious the shadows that escape through hot teeth and curled lips, that fall like judgments— bloody— upon noble heads and gaping maws of graves. Do hearts of pitch feel the ambitious stings of Conscience’s stabs? Or are they as elusive as Hypnos’ kiss or the sweet wet of warm suckle? How go, you, weird sister, true— Thirst of Evil’s Sword— obscured by the sun and gold’s warm glimmer ‘round weary brow and crimson finger? Watch how you go, fateful bride, for baneful cries ride the breeze like hoary devils or dark spells, long looking to collect their due. David Estringel is a Xicanx writer/poet with works in literary publications like The Opiate, Sledgehammer Lit, and Terror House Magazine. He has published three poetry collections, Indelible Fingerprints, Blood Honey, and Cold Comfort House with his fourth little punctures scheduled for a December 2022 release, as well as five poetry chapbooks, Punctures, PeripherieS, Eating Pears on the Rooftop, Golden Calves, and Blue. Connect with David on Twitter @The_Booky_Man and www.davidaestringel.com.

by Jack B. Bedell It’s a stag party out here tonight at the water’s edge. There must be a hundred ouaouaron hunkered down to their eyeballs along the bank, just bellowing their toes up. All volume and urgency. They swell and call inland toward the trees. And not a single one of them lets size or distance or numbers or time cast any doubt on where this night’s headed. Their whole plan’s foolproof, actually. Makes me wonder if I’ve been going about it all wrong walking from one end of this swamp to the other every day looking for salvation. Maybe they’ve found the truth. No matter how high this water gets, how dead the trees, or how hot the air, as long as you can keep your mouth above surface enough to call out, heaven might just make its way to you. Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in HAD, Heavy Feather, Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Moist, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, and other journals. His latest collection is Against the Woods’ Dark Trunks (Mercer University Press, 2022). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.

by Susan Barry-Schulz That summer my body a furnace<simmering like milk< blooming frothy and thick over the scoured rim of the stainless steel Dutch oven<dripping down the back of the stove to a place I can’t reach any- more<my feet a damp root cellar<calves bursting< my under-clothes soaked<the dog licking my salty shins<hair oily and dark at the crown<my face slick< sour<my signature scent<a stagnant puddle ensconced where the angel shushed me<brown eyes burning through pages of memoirs of all the poets who bore the heat far better than I<if only a wind< if only a cloud<if only a thunder-clap<a flash of lightening <a torrent enough to fill the rain barrel<if only September. Susan Barry-Schulz grew up just outside of Buffalo, New York. She is a licensed physical therapist and a poet living with chronic illness. Her poetry has appeared in SWWIM, Barrelhouse online, Kissing Dynamite, Rogue Agent, New Verse News, Nightingale & Sparrow, Shooter Literary Magazine, The Wild Word, Bending Genres, MORIA Literary Magazine, B O D Y, Gyroscope Review, Harpy Hybrid Review, Wordgathering, West Trestle Review, River Mouth Review, SHIFT, Pine Hills Review, and elsewhere.

by Robin Bissett Tanya and I could never keep clean for long. It was late June when her cattle dog Herc escaped from home. We stirred up dust running along his favorite neighborhood routes and hollering his name. Every few blocks, we stopped to breathe, the cat-like screams of the wandering neighborhood peacocks rattling inside our bony chests. While we were running, her long legs poured out over the dirt, like marks of a language I didn’t understand. I watched her, the way she took to the wind, and how the earth seemed to swell beneath her feet. It was during one of these stretches when I couldn’t look away that I tripped on a limestone rock, stumbled behind, and fell hard on my knees. Then, Tanya was there. I wanted to cry because she must have heard me go down. She placed her palm on my forehead, and I wanted to cry even more. She looked me in the eye as she put her lips to my torn-up knee, her spit on my blood. We didn’t speak, but I grew flush and I felt better. I knew that if I had the choice, I would fall again. We didn’t find Herc. Instead, we walked slowly on the way back to her house, our arms swinging side by side, rotating in sloppy circles but never touching. We were silent in our understanding, aware that something had changed. When at last Herc returned home later that night with the shiny, empty body of a peacock in tow, we dragged him inside by his collar and locked him in his kennel, where he whimpered and quivered for hours. There were thorny sandburs stuck to his coat and buried in his belly and skinny front legs. “Bad dog, bad dog!” we clucked our tongues at him, avoiding each other’s gaze. Later that night, we dug a grave for the dead bird in Tanya’s backyard. The peacock’s glossy turquoise and green feathers were crooked and sharp, poking into the brown dirt. Circular eyes ran along the top of the bird’s crumpled feather train, watching us as we worked. Tears leaked down Tanya’s face, leaving long streaks through the grime we wore like second skins. Tanya, Herc, and those birds are gone. I look her up online sometimes, jump across the Facebook albums she has named by month and year. Tanya’s in love with a man with thinning hair and an ashen complexion. She is a dental hygienist. I, too, am far from home now, in a new city of my own. But if ever asked about my youth that is what I remember first: Tanya and those eternal dirt roads. I can still hear the ghostly evening songs of the peacocks, who cried out in the fading twilight as we ran, searching for what we had lost. Robin Bissett is a writer, editor, and teaching artist from West Texas. She is an alumna of the University of Iowa's International Writing Program Summer Institute and a first-year fiction MFA candidate at the University of Montana where she serves as the Online Managing Editor of CutBank.

By C Heyne THE STATE REMINDS ME IT IS THE FINAL DAY TO SUBMIT A VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT from IMPACT (UNABRIDGED) & when writing the VIS, one must not think about the lack of time given to write it. time is a motherfucker and an affair of capitalism. TIME IS A MOTHERFUCKER and the antagonist of all my writing. FATHER TIME IS A DEADBEAT who left us all for his secretary, who ripped the family ties, who danced on the grave of HOPE, my mother I miss. & what then should the, particularly uninspired, victim do? what a privilege it was to take a day away from writing, or better yet, set a time in which I would write every other day. the routine, a coffee (or two), books of inspirit. somedays, the rain an inspiration – others a day off; I was a lenient boss. one that scoffed in the face of profit over people, one who would ask softly to hug me when I was overwhelmed, I had an abundance of hugs. now, I twitch at my brother’s embrace. & the body can fear. body fears sleep, fears bed, fears sauna, fears men, fears night walks, fears days strolls, fears public restrooms, fears the arm twitch in the elevator, the leg twitch in the subway, fears its reaction to fear, fears fear, fears fear of fearing fear of all fear AND OVERTHINKING FEAR. & Is the prosecutor forbidden any poetic license at all in his argument? asks conservative chief justice Rehnquist in Payne v Tennessee, 1991 – questioning if victim impact statements are cruel and unusual punishment (TO THE DEFENDANT) and if they are admissible in a court of law. they were determined not to be and are. & the implication of the victim impact statement comes from its ephemera. yes, it is considered that the mere existence of VISes necessitates an acute efficiency in its creative. yes, it is considered that THE STATE is an actor of capitalism and that THE STATE must receive payment and cannot afford the survivor a residency in writing their VIS. therefore, it is also considered that the allowance of an impact statement simultaneously empowers and encumbers a survivor of violence. it is considered (well, well, considered) that the statement should be written early, as details of its history (though namely not its impact) will be forgotten. the hand will be a duck. the crotch will be a stove. the heat will be a winter. everything will be tinted blue until it’s gray. until it’s a stomachache, a day is a bed. but beauty of language is a beauty of meditation, of refinement. the efficacy of a statement requires it not be impeded by distraction of the present, the play you saw a few days after, the lover that left before court began, the unresolved traumas, a revolving door of complications. so one must consider, how is an impact measured? how is it not a mosaic? how is it obtainable or ever fully stated? THE STATE REQUESTS A VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENT from IMPACT (UNABRIDGED) while I’m compacting my thoughts as a jug filled with wine both plain and magic my lover texts what’s your fucking problem and I say I don’t know and I wish someone would tell me. wish to know the bare falsehoods I’m fed on silver, to know why a stranger’s perversion cannot be contained, to know why the detective of THE STATE felt so comfortable calling me one of his victims when referring to a conversation he had about me with his wife to know how to write the impact, to know how to tell my brother I’m working on things and mean it, to know what parts of me are plain which are enchanted C. Heyne (any/all) is a genderqueer writer from Sunrise, Florida, and resides in Hoboken, NJ. C is the recipient of the William Morgan Poetry Award and has work featured or forthcoming in Sundog Lit, DreamPOP, Identity Theory, and Boats Against The Current, amongst others. Their chapbook "my room (and other wombs)" is forthcoming (Bullshit Lit, 2023).

by Vic Motier Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I drove past my grandmother’s house for the first time in ten years. She is no longer alive. A new family moved in years ago. What should have been a yard filled with jungles of plants that would have your legs itching for days, covering the pathway and all things civilized, was filled with polite, tidy flowers that seemed to apologize for their own appearance. Dare they cross paths with a centimeter of concrete, they’d have no choice but to wither and die, an atonement for daring to live. My grandmother would never have allowed such behavior—any attempt at order would result in a smiling scold. This new yard had no character. No charm. Just the obvious desire to satisfy the neighbors and their bi-monthly catalogs. Many other things are amiss. The worst part, however, the very worst part, is the gate. A tiny little white picket sits boldly on the walkway. There is no fence. Just this little gate taunting guests with its pointless lock undone and done again at every visit. My grandmother would never have a gate. She would never close people out or delay their arrival. She’d be appalled at the current state of her garden. Furious, I drive home. Don’t the people living in my grandmother’s house know that it’s not theirs to change? Do they think that they can just come in and rearrange the furniture to their liking, too? Paint the walls? Take the vases from the windowsills? This is still my grandmother’s house. Just because she is dead does not mean she’s not allowed to have her house. Her garden. I arrive home and pull the old string to turn on the hallway closet light. Digging through the faded board games and lonely cables to find a phone book, I know there must be one here somewhere—my parents are horrible at getting rid of things. I search and search. Nothing. I tear apart my house, cobwebbed hair, sweaty-faced. I sigh. No phone book in sight. I grab my parents’ landline and call the first number that pops into my mind, hoping I could still be holding on to this important piece of information. No luck. It’s the number for the pizza place down the street from my childhood home. I dial another number. My aunt. I hang up quickly; she cannot know what I am up to. I cannot find another number tucked away in my memories. I do, however, remember the area code. I start with the area code, then seven 0s. Nothing. I change the last 0 to a 1. Not right. I do this until my body forces me to sleep a few thousand numbers in. I need to reach the house. I need to reach my her. My grandmother. I need to tell her to look outside. To tell her to look at what they have done to her garden. Vic Motier is a proud Philadelphian with a love for films, writing, acting, and fiber art. They can be found on Instagram @vic.motier

by George Espinoza The dining table’s edge awaits your stride. Chairs sorted, the chandelier gleams, your flesh met by pronged maple wood. Yet my thigh bears the purple-smudged greeting. After rushing the fridge, you place green peas wrapped in a peach washcloth over my welt. Groans slowly lulled, your thoughts are home remedies, fixed on aid. The evening, blunt with appetite, watches through our windows. The cutting board stiffens. I begin slicing yellow onions into curled strands when the Chef’s blade hesitates, then lunges at my index. Your open hand, like a broken cranberry jar, leaks red. I ransack the cabinets until I find sterile gauze. Covering your flesh slash, like closing the blinds as the sunset seeps through. My fingers are makeshift stitches, tending to your skin. You kiss my cheek, and we decide to order takeout instead. George Espinoza is an undergraduate student who resides on Long Island, New York. When he’s not poring over his keyboard, he’s grudgingly running in unpleasant weather, daydreaming about food, or watching families of geese generate ample traffic. His work can be found in DED Poetry and Agape Review.