David GalefWEBSITE INSECURITY QUESTIONS What was your first pet’s favorite color? How many pets have you neglected since then? This is about your father, isn’t it? How often do you think about sex? What did you drink on your first…
Anne PanningPANDEMIC MOTHER’S DAY, STOKOE FARMS, UPSTATE NEW YORK Cost of admission: purchase of two dozen apple cider donuts, delivered to cars by a masked grandmother. As part of the donut deal, you earned drive-through privileges to view exotic animals.…
Sandra FlorenceGIRL IN THE ENCHANTED KINGDOM We are playing Concentration. First, she finds the Jacks and then the Queens. Her head was lopsided when she was born, and she stared up at me with rolling grey eyes. I unwrapped her…
Sarah BergerLOOKING UP One thing I did when I was twenty was fall in love with a Roman Catholic boy and get all confused. I was a half-Jew-half-gentile quasi-Lutheran atheist, led as in a trance to the burly God of…
Todd Clay StuartCHERRY BOMB The object of the game is to see how long we can hold a lit Cherry Bomb in our hand before tossing it away. Ray-Ray Campbell claims he’s champion of the fucking world. Took the title…
Claire OlesonADDING APPETIZERS She was sitting on a stool in the basement of the restaurant watching the octopus spin. It was on a cold/cold cycle in the washing machine. This was how they tenderized it, Ellis had told her, overjoyed…
Gabby CaponeTHE LOBSTER It was winter, mid-December, much too cold to leave him there—the lobster, on my porch. I don’t know how he got there, whether he’d walked or hailed a cab. But it was snowing, and he looked so…
Rebecca EntelWE’VE WAITED FOR VACCINES Of when my father had polio, I’ve heard disjointed details but no narrative. Scalding baths, quarantine, how many adults held him down for the spinal tap, the iron lung, paralysis that one day disappeared. In…
Shuly Xóchitl CawoodMAKING THE READER FEEL SOMETHING. PLEASE. SHOW AND TELL. “Show, don’t tell.” An old piece of writing advice, generally good advice, but sometimes hard to know how to do it well. Also, confusing, because telling is often part…
Fiction by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, reviewed by Beth KephartA GHOST IN THE THROAT (Biblioasis) “This is a female text,” Doireann Ní Ghríofa asserts as her story begins. A rouse. A prayer. A persuasion. A female text because Ní Ghríofa suffuses…
Interview by Michelle RossDan Crawley, Author of STRAIGHT DOWN THE ROAD, a novella in flash Dan Crawley’s novella-in-flash, Straight Down the Road, was highly commended by judge Michael Loveday in the 2019 Bath Novella in Flash Award and published by…
Fiction by Chloe Gong, reviewed by Kristie Gadson THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS (Simon Pulse, Simon & Schuster) Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights is a vibrant reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, taking place during the Roaring Twenties in Shanghai of…
Margot DouaihyQUEER (PRIVATE) EYE: Crafting a New Hardboiled Sleuth “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” —Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep There’s arguably no writer more emblematic of the hardboiled…
Fiction by Jordi Nopca, translated by Mara Faye Lethem, reviewed by Michael McCarthy COME ON UP (Bellevue Literary Press) At first, it’s a promise. Come on up! It’s a pledge made to every up-and-comer in Barcelona. The city provides a…
A former student (now a writer and a teacher) finds himself in his once-teacher’s memoir. A conversation ensues about mirrors, facsimiles, and blankness.
Bailey BridgewaterAVOIDING / EMBRACING: Strategies for Writers with Anxiety Disorders Ah, writing and mental health conditions—a power couple in the collective imagination of what influences how artists create. Biographies, movies, TV shows, and even books have reinforced the idea that…
Sandy SmithWhat I Learned from Jennifer Egan’s Use of Sensory Detail On a friend’s repeated urging to read Jennifer Egan’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Visit from the Goon Squad, I went to my small local bookstore. They had no copies…
Jane Rosenberg LaForgeSISTERHOOD: How the Books we Both Read Helped Me Write My Sister’s Life into Fiction When my sister, Susan, was still in elementary school, a family friend gave her a book for her birthday, The Wizard of Wallaby…
Nonfiction by Elissa Washuta, reviewed by Eric BuechelWHITE MAGIC (Tin House) In Elissa Washuta’s book of linked essays, White Magic, she writes about her substance abuse candidly, describing getting high with cough syrup as a teenager in her school’s bathroom…
Melinda ScullyA BOOK BY ANY OTHER NAME: ON TITLES AND DATING Imagine a reader is on a blind date with your book or short story. Maybe a friend set them up, or they ventured out for a local singles speed-dating…
Claire Rudy FosterLA BALEINE I did not know anything about whales until I became one. In the first trimester of my pregnancy, I transitioned, changing into a creature that was part meat and part ocean. My pregnant body was flush…
Sydney StewardTHE MOMENT I KNEW I LOVED _________ My Grandmother I look up from my phone, scouting the street signs for a match—Madison Avenue. I turn left, quickly glance across the road for oncoming traffic, and press on. The air…
Maya Savin MillerCHRIST (OR MAYBE JOHN LENNON) IN A PRISON WAITING ROOM In small town Georgia, the prison plays Christmas music over the waiting room speakers on the Fourth of July. My mother hands my brother and me two dollar…
L. L. BabbWHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL YOUR LIFE? In a minivan borrowed from Connie’s sister, Connie and Lori were on their way to the town of Locke. Connie drove, keeping her eyes straight ahead. So far there had been…
Morgan MotesHEAVY BREATHING IN NIGHT: Paintings Morgan Motes’ work is a visual representation of the feeling of being alone in nature. It is an expressionistic attempt to return to a sublime and nuanced world often left out of our technologically…
Louise BarrySLOW STARTER 1. I stand at the kitchen table, poking at a lump of raw bread dough. “I don’t understand why it’s not rising,” I say. My roommate wants to be helpful. “Sometimes it’s the temperature of the room,”…
Darlene EliotCATCHING AIR Kevin rolled his ankle on August 25th and never stopped talking about it. The steep hill, the bearings, the cross street of killer cars, the way he caught air before landing on the compost heap placed-there-by-God so…
James Stewart IIISILENT KILLER Nine months into the global pandemic that has taken more than 200,000 lives in the US, it was finally my turn to go to the doctor. However, despite the ever-present fear and paranoia that turns every…
Jinna HanI LIKE IT If there was a fly on the wall right now, my eyes would be following it. As there isn’t, I resign myself to banging my feet against the chair leg and watching my pencil roll across…
Steve GergleySUNRISE Manga Today I stole a violin and sold it for drugs. It belonged to a blond-haired kid no older than fifteen. I took it after he walked out of church and started masturbating to a manga in the…
Neal J. SuitHouse of Mirrors The police cruiser appeared as the dusty orange of dusk settled. The car’s lights and sirens remained off because it wasn’t an emergency. Rumors swept across the town. Katie had run away. She was abducted.…
Christina Berke13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT SEX “Abstinence,” my health teacher says. “It’s the only guaranteed way to avoid STDs and pregnancy.” My mother never gives me the talk; my father’s girlfriend slides a book to me about changing bodies.…
B. Bilby GartonAURAL Before I learned that wounded birds are rarely rehabilitated in treehouses, I studied acoustics in a small yellow farmhouse. It started out elementary, like any other subject. A man’s loud voice: this is anger. Mother’s soft voice…
Samantha CampagnaA CLAMOR OF VOICES Cars are backed up two blocks in line to pull into a big-box store. It’s still cold in the suburbs of Chicago and a frenzied mob of people rushes into the store in puffy coats…
Susan HamlinINSTRUCTIONS FOR COHABITATING WITH AN AGING PARENT Number of people required: One still-independent ninety-year-old mother One more-than-middle-aged child Necessary tools: 10 x 12-foot guest room that used to be your brother’s bedroom (yours is now “the computer room”). 6…
Meg Pokrass & Aimee ParkisonTRUCKIN’ Truckers’ wives warned me it was a lonely life, unless I was willing to travel with you. When we go truckin’ together in my mind, I see so much life out the truck windows as…
Dylan CookTHE GREENER MY GRASS Maureen could clearly remember the day in December the two young professors moved in across the street and how much more she respected them back then. It was a shame that Mrs. Graham had passed,…
Mike NeesFLARE As she clocks in, Jillian looks up from the computer to find a wrinkled envelope dangling in her face. Her chest tightens. “Thank god you’re here,” Sonya says, waiting for her to take it. “Everyone’s calling out.” Jillian…
Anthony AgueroBEING WHOLE AFTER A DIAGNOSIS I. Diagnosis Someone likens your body to soured-meat, Flies swarming the thighs, a hint of cinnamon Brushes just underneath your nose. ELISA, has confirmed the inevitable. O you enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. II. Treatment Plan…
Michael GreenSOMETHING’S GOTTA CHANGE a Visual Narrative Michael Green is a physician and artist who lives and rides his bicycle throughout Central Pennsylvania. He is a founding Board Member of the Graphic Medicine International Collective, an organization devoted to the…
Meggie RoyerTHE SECOND STEP That night, the door so waterlogged with rain it stuck for hours, hinges flush with the frame, a mouth against spine. In the woods that year, several syringes we could never place, some long-ago nectar unraveling…
Heikki HuotariAS TRANSPARENT AS IT GETS Just because you’re parasailing doesn’t mean this call’s not coming from inside your house. As mirror neurons turn, I’m casting demons and fly fishing with them. In each multi-facet is…
Amy Beth SissonDISSECTION After school my teacher helped me pull the pink downy breast feathers to clear the skin and make an incision She put the scalpel into my hand smaller than the body pinned to the black wax tray…
Peter WearHAVANA, ILLINOIS, AUGUST 2020 White clouds, so many white clouds pause above August’s green cornfields– an armada of triremes, sails cast in marble, cross empty skies armies dreamed held destinies that might outlive them, mortal sons clad in fathers’…
travis tateWHERE I WAIT FOR YOU The river before anything else, the glazed sun emerging gently from evening. You, brightly looking towards what I hope is me or, some future tense self where I’m dangling slightly less from crisp edges.…
Nonfiction by Betsy Bonner, reviewed by Laura Smith THE BOOK OF ATLANTIS BLACK (Tin House) “Remove toxic people from your life” is one of today’s modern mantras. It’s easy advice to give, but it can be impossible to follow. Author…
I approached More Miracle than Bird, Alice Miller’s debut novel about W.B. Yeats and his erstwhile muse, Georgie Hyde-White, as a poet interested in learning about Yeats and the woman who influenced his work. Although we get insights about the poet and his work, the novel is more about the journey of his muse, a naïve but determined rebel attempting to thwart the traditional roles that have been carved out for her. We see her youthful struggles and missteps, but by the novel’s close, we see a woman who has learned that holding onto the philandering Yeats means reshaping herself into someone who can contribute to his work.
Six Days in November by Emily Steinberg Emily Steinberg is an artist, writer, and educator whose work has been shown across the United States and Europe. She has been named the first Artist in Residence at Drexel College of Medicine…
VIOLATION“Excuse me, Miss, is this yours?”
I turn and see the large, inquisitive eyes of a woman behind me. I’ve been startled from my thoughts, and I am briefly confused as my eyes follow her outstretched arm, down her red sleeve, to the pointed tip of her manicured finger. My neck scarf has fallen to the floor. I bend awkwardly over my carry-on to stuff it back into my bag, deeper this time.
I smile at her, looking past her eyes at the gray-streaked red hair that hangs limply at the sides of her temple. “Thank you.”
Evan AndersSPEAKING OF SUNFLOWERS the world is bare bones an orphan after rage relinquishes her arrow. magnolias ago, sunflowers stormed my mouth every night an attempt to take ownership of the sun every tide stumbling into decimation a collied exists…