Ginger Ayla DRINK, ANYWAY, THE LIGHT There are creatures adapted to living so low in the ocean they can only survive in extreme pressure, any attempt to lift them causes disintegration, they lack the necessary compression to hold together scale…
Marie ManillaRETROSPECTIVE Lena skids around the backseat as the cabbie rudely shifts lanes. Her gnarled knuckles couldn’t negotiate the seatbelt. The tunnel engulfs her, the hum and grrr. The weight of all that earth compressing her brain. But they emerge…
Patricia Flaherty Pagan TIDINGS OF COMFORT AND JOY Before she throws my father’s Christmas stocking into the fireplace, Siobhan brings it out to the porch to show it to us. “I dreamt his cruise ship exploded. Dad drowned,” she says.…
Meg Pokrass MOM AND THE OTTERS There was the time Dad scooted home with a bunch of supermarket flowers, handed Mom what he had to offer, flashed us his new beard, and we chanted Beard! Beard! Beard! like we were…
Gideon Huan-LangTRANSNESS AS PERPETUAL PAPERBOY Imagine: Victorian hand-me-downs, black suspenders, tweed-lined cap. And he is holleringabout the end of the world. Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Call him doomsday cult, the way he had broken his voice already—the Titanic,…
A Writing Prompt by Layla MurphyHate Christmas, You’re Allowed Bah humbug—this again! Christmas is right around the corner, and whether you celebrate it or not, you’ve surely got some holiday sensory-overload by now. I thought we should turn things topsy-turvy…
Interview by Michelle FostA Conversation with Beth Kephart, author of My Life in Paper: Adventures in Ephemera (Temple University Press) I had the chance to have a conversation with Beth Kephart, whose new book, My Life in Paper, has recently…
A Writing Tip by Jen MathyBooster Clubs Don’t Just Sit in The Stands A successful writer today has a whole new set of responsibilities. Yes, your primary role is that of artist and writer. First, create. Then, with the understanding…
A Writing Tip by Karen RileWRITE DANGEROUSLY The best way to improve your writing is to cultivate a consistent practice. There are many ways to approach your practice, and you might change up your techniques frequently in order to keep…
Nonfiction by Harry N. MacLean, reviewed by Anna LlewellynSTARKWEATHER: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE KILLING SPREE THAT CHANGED AMERICA (Counterpoint Press) The stranger asks no greater glory till life is through than to spend one last minute in wilderness. —Charles…
A Novel by Claire Fuller, reviewed by Coralie LoonTHE MEMORY OF ANIMALS (Tin House Books) We’re all familiar with the sense of exhaustion and collective grief that seeped into our bones during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though the pandemic is…
A Short Story Collection by Amber Caron, reviewed by Char DreyerCALL UP THE WATERS (Milkweed Editions) “You’re gonna wanna find the biggest branch you can and make a lot of noise as you run.” This was the only terse instruction…
A Writing Tip by Layla MurphyWRITE LIKE YOU’RE DYING I never knew what a death doula was until I listened to an episode of NPR’s Life Kit the other day focused on relationship repair. It seemed odd at first that…
A Writing Tip by Michelle Bitting FINDING GOLD IN LOST TREASURE “There is something to be said for a boundary, there is something to be said for unbinding.” ~ Diane Seuss I remind myself and my students to write with…
A Writing Prompt from Anne AnthonyBEGUILING
Justin Eells A Conversation with James Sullivan, author of HARBORING James Sullivan and I attended the same MFA program and later shared an office as adjuncts at that same school, Minnesota State University, Mankato. Over those years, we shared work…
A Writing Tip from Leonard KressHEADLINE POETRY I was driving to work a few weeks ago, listening closely to a news report about the survivalist Eric Frein, who had just murdered a Pennsylvania State Trooper and managed to evade capture…
Adrie Rose THE USES OF ANAPHORA in Jason Schneiderman’s Poems “Anger” and “Star Dust” When I first heard Jason Schneiderman read his poems “Anger,” and “Star Dust” in a 2021 episode of Rachel Zucker’s Commonplace podcast, I realized both make…
A Writing Tip from Matt BroomfieldWRITE WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW Revoke the tired shibboleth, and write what you don’t know. But first, come to know it, as though it were your own. Live as you read and read as you…
A Writing Tip from Mark DanowskyDABBLE IN EKPHRASIS Ekphrasis provides an opportunity for artforms to engage with each other. As a poet, this often means engaging with visual art. Ekphrastic writing is an excuse to look at other artforms as…
A Writing Tip from Eileen ToomeyDEADHEADING You planted the mums the week before the early September heatwave. Even though you watered every morning, there are many withered blooms. Without thinking, you pull the dead buds from the stems, leaving…
In her short story “Home Away From Home” (Issue 43), Cecile Callan takes readers into a smoky bar in the city, where richly-drawn characters are thrown together and forced to face themselves. Callan shares insights about writing the story with…
A Writing Tip from Angelina SciollaGETTING INTO CHARACTER Often when you encounter a creative writer, you may be meeting a small business owner, a teacher, physician, or a parent doing any number of these things. As they orient themselves to…
A Short Story Collection by Janice Deal, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss CampbellSTRANGE ATTRACTORS: THE EPHREM STORIES (New Door Books) Janice Deal has said of her earlier award-winning fiction that place is often her muse. Now in Strange Attractors: The Ephrem…
Chelsey Clammer SELF-TAUT I spend fifteen minutes of my life negotiating with an egg. Again. How its hard-boiledness acts like a six-course meal. I have to sit down. Not at the table—too dizzy for that—but on the hardwood floor—quick—back against…
Second Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition In this “American ghazal,” Eileen Toomey braids the distancing, medicalized description of immunotherapy as a cancer treatment with the immediacy of a couple’s weed-infused road trip from Jersey to Chicago while the husband…
Brooke White MERMAIDIA In Greece, there were stories about Poseidon; in the Roman Empire, there was Neptune. Before that, there was Ea, Babylonian god of the sea. Even earlier was Atargatis, the Syrian goddess of fertility who was half-human, half-fish.…
Christian Chase Garner JAPANESE BEEF CURRY: A PANORAMIC Step #1: Make the curry roux Heat a pan to medium-low heat on your stovetop, or your induction burner, if you live in a twelve-by-forty-foot rectangular building that used to be your…
Alex Behm MAIN LINE His voice is scratchy with sleep and a virus. I ask how he’s feeling. What’s wrong, my father interrupts through the phone. I’m just thinking, I say. Again. My father is in another state, trying to…
Susan Barr-Toman OLD WOMAN BEARING FRUIT My senior year of college, I was set to graduate a semester early. Instead, I took a full-time position at the university and enrolled part-time, hoping it would make things easier. I’d been working…
Jeff Ewing THE OTHER DRUMMER Muriel’s already at the site, waiting for me. I drop my gear on the ground beside hers. The heat is oppressive, the sun’s fist bearing down. Why the festivals all choose summer is beyond me.…
Jessica Klimesh NOBODY TELLS YOU ANY OF THIS Nobody tells you how quickly the face of a dead person loses color, how quickly gray washes over you, how quickly the person who was your mother becomes a body to be…
Will Musgrove HEADED OUT WEST The movers spoke like cowboys. “Tarnation,” said Butch, middle-aged and owner of Old West Movers LLC, as he lifted my dresser. “This varmint weighs as much as my horse.” Butch Junior, his son, whistled one…
Anne Anthony IT’S A MOTHER THING Don’t tell your daughter to text you when she’s back safely on the ground standing beside the luggage carousel at JFK because she’ll forget, she always forgets, and stay away from tonight’s headline news,…
Isabel Cristina Legarda THE BODY During class the Body would lie still like the other cadavers, submitting mutely to the students’ scrutiny. On the first day, the students tried to hide their fear under façades of bravado. Gallows humor betrayed…
Cody Shrum ZENITH Four of them were out that night: two brothers and a couple. They’d been howling at the moon, driving around, being kids—senior year, winter break. Wattles Road was just outside town, nobody around to bother them. The…
Clara Bush Vadala PARTHENOGENESIS Sonnet Crown for Anna the anaconda from Boston’s New England Aquarium, 2019 Her unborn litter will find it very hard to come undone because their mother did not for anyone either. When she heard indecence she…
Elizabeth Brus LINA AND NINA When I sucked on Tiana, pulling the skin up in my mouth like Fiona told me you do it, it left a mark that was darker than even her skin was, black against brown like…
Cecile Callan HOME AWAY FROM HOME Into the sleek metal shaker went the whiskey, Frangelico, white crème de cacao, heavy cream. The bartender reached for an egg—crack—and slid the yellow orb from shell to shell as the white jiggled slithery…
Ellie J. Anderson ENSENADA Teri and Hal drove past the leaning cardboard shacks of Tijuana to a large old hotel at Estero Beach. They’d been separated for eight months and Hal had been living with a woman named Marilyn. He…
Robert Nazar Arjoyan DRUNK IN THE GRAVEYARD Jesus Christ ticked off each push-up while Neil Young sang about a man and a maid. Raffi’s hands reddened with strain and weight, flushing redder in a slant shaft of summer sun. The…
David Jack SparksDINNER IS AT SEVEN-THIRTY She opens the apartment door and frowns a smile at him, looks him up and down, holding onto the edge of the door as if she hasn’t yet decided whether to let him in.…
Micah Muldowney CONFESSIONS It is a full moon tonight, but she has yet to clear the colinas of Salina Cruz. She might not crest at all; they are high and stark, almost walls, and the valley is very thin, almost…
Zachariah Claypole White OCD SONNET #3 Sonnet enough of poetry—i want only honesty between us how once for cbt i had to call my mother a bitch it’s almost funny now—her delight i mean when finally i did—or the video…
Maya Salameh MUSIC TO DROWN BY Shape Poem do you understand? you speak & the sun spills out. this is how a computer is made: an ocean meets a relic in a midsize city. their story becomes innards which become…
Penny Johnson LOCKDOWN Pantoum Four days until they shamble back to school. Even the lithe dreamers, penchant for subordinate clause, nominative absolute steel edged and burly boys who pin each other, thud of flesh to mat in calculation of atomic…
Honorable Mention, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition Geoffrey Billetter GORGON SON Geoffrey Billetter is a Chicago poet and prose writer. He writes autobiography into images that reveal multiple systems of reading and reference, often in conversation with the South and…
First Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition I love Weijia Pan’s contemporary approach to the Sapphic stanza—a lyric poetic form created by the Greek poet Sappho, from her home on the island of Lesbos. Here, each five-line fragment represents the…
Jeff Pearson ENGAGEMENT CORONA “The mouth of weeds marriage.” She shivered. “It’s—it’s a death!” –John Ashbery, “Idaho” Absence holds rings on our fingers, bright, until each ring’s syntax is muted with flash flood weather steaming the windows, plies of books…
Third Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition In “grindr villanelle,” Matt Broomfield creates the unlikely hook-up between the queer dating app Grindr and an unruly version of the challenging, delicate, French-derived villanelle form. Broomfield also marries contemporary language and experience…