Poetry by Makayla Edwards

“…I heard a soft breeze / beneath my feet, trapped on the underside of reality.”

Flash Fiction by Mileva Anastasiadou

“…the music plays on and on and on at the grief party, when we throw our hands in the air as instructed and wave them like we don’t care, and we sway till the end.”

Flash Fiction by Antonio Sodré

“She hears stories just like hers. A thousand stories, each one the same and yet entirely different. When the gates lock, the partners are the first to disappear. Those who can't stomach the solitude chase downers and sleep the days away.”

Poetry by Damon Hubbs

“Grow my hair, / wear women’s clothes / to get an inch closer to you / my sweetly slutty princess days.”

CNF by Erica Anderson

“That little sh*t stop patch of land is permanently burned into my brain. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the sight alone makes my body remember unloading brunch onto very expensive dirt.”

Poetry by Sean Foster

“All the Evangelicals prayed / their children be boys. / They hoped he be either Jesus, / come again / or, his shadow./ Alleluia.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“Support the / abstraction in your mind / if it is / worth keeping.”

Poetry by Joy Yin

“…I chew, taste, stay; / and 想 wonder if your boots have dried, back where / the sun still shines / upon the mandarins.”

Fiction by Ken McRae

“I met Charon in the breakroom. He was standing in front of all three vending machines. He stooped slightly so his head didn’t hit the ceiling...His left arm displayed a fierce snake tattoo, with scarlet eyes and long, sharp fangs. His skiff pole leaned against the wall.”

Poetry by Allister Nelson (from the serialized chapbook Jethro’s Daughter)

“in the waters, abyssal womb, once there was darkness, and Trickster lit a fire upon the Deep. maybe god figured in, maybe She didn’t.”

Poetry by Howie Good

“All good stories, Hemingway said, end in death.”

CNF by Kristy Money

“I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was 40. This was by design: In my adolescence and early adulthood, being able to hold myself back from orgasm was my ‘superpower.’”

Poetry by Mark James Andrews

“Saturday night and I was up at the lectern / off to the side of the altar in St David Church / in a fine Detroit neighborhood doing readings / from St. Paul and Kahil Gibran love verse…”

Serialized Novel by Tom Stuckey (Writer-in-Residence)

“…I got underneath and looked up at the ceiling and watched as my breath formed into vapour momentarily with every movement of my rib cage. I wondered how long it would be before I was in a different room with a man in a white coat being asked to explain Thomas and Rome…”

Poetry by Colette Maxfield

“Before long she was running in and out / Like a trapped cat / That hisses / When it speaks.”

Fiction by Kendra Augustin

“I tell her I miss the way she tastes. She slaps me. I tell her I want a baby. She bites me. I tell her I love her. She breaks my nose. I tell her to kill me if I ever am this stupid again. She wipes my bloody nose and nods.”

Poetry by Karina Longo

“If closing my eyes means / only meeting you in a / dream, / I’ll hold my / breath; / bring the / insomnia / beats.”

Poetry by Marty Shambles (Writer-in-Residence)

“i broke / out of everywhere / jails, mental institutions, hospitals, / air ports, the dmv… i / always had drywall in my / hair.”

Poetry by Howie Good

“All good stories, Hemingway said, end in death.”

Poetry by Joy Yin

“…I chew, taste, stay; / and 想 wonder if your boots have dried, back where / the sun still shines / upon the mandarins.”

CNF by Kristy Money

“I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was 40. This was by design: In my adolescence and early adulthood, being able to hold myself back from orgasm was my ‘superpower.’”

by Michael Templeton (from column Wander Lines)

“if we come to see that poetry is something that is created in the streets, that poetry is something that connects our inner life to the world around us in ways that are immediate and extremely real to us, poetry can be understood in ways that are far more useful.”

by Glenn Wallis

“A blood-red lake of sky appears in the opening where black rain clouds part. Claret red. Oozing, spurting, pulsing, like magma from an erupting volcano. Its sheer aliveness frightens him…Older kids say, with a mix of hysteria and awe, ‘This is the return of Jesus.’”

Column by Michael Templeton (from Wander Lines)

“We were compelled to speed up in order to produce for others. Slowness offers the space for us to create ourselves for ourselves.“

Poetry by Allister Nelson (from the serialized chapbook Jethro’s Daughter)

“in the waters, abyssal womb, once there was darkness, and Trickster lit a fire upon the Deep. maybe god figured in, maybe She didn’t.”

by Hugh Blanton

“A reader may get the idea that Gerstler loves to write about women behaving badly (there's even a Mae West sonnet in here), but she says what she's really writing about is women behaving boldly.”

by David Estrinel (feature)

“[Ripped Backsides] not only fulfilled its promise to deliver a dopamine-laced travel log/urban anthropologist shadow diary but also an erudite commentary on societal decay and disconnection that rings true today, as much as it did decades ago, if not more.”

Column by Michael Templeton (from Wander Lines)

“We were compelled to speed up in order to produce for others. Slowness offers the space for us to create ourselves for ourselves.“

Book Review by David Estringel

“At their core, despite the sense of loss and chaos and alienation one perceives through their reading, Cvencek’s poems convey an optimism (if not in glimpses and glimmers) that promise the reader a hopeful release from his or her own demons.”

from Wander Lines by Michael Templeton (column)

““Now that AI is taking hold of the general intellect and the human capacity to think and create, the homogenization of all life will be complete. All will be a form of mediocrity and there will be no one around who is capable of recognizing mediocrity as mediocrity.”

by Timothy Petkovic (book review)

“The Emperor of Gladness is so overwhelming in its brilliance, so full-bodied and ambitious, you have to submit to it. Bloody hell. Shit, he’s good. Piss off, any critics. All hail Ocean Vuong.”

by Christie Chapman (book review)

“In this pressure-cooker world, where so many seem to be chasing after the top dogs, the glitz and clout, the Big Five, the “template for success”—Take It Personally, in its unbothered originality, is refreshing. “A+.”

from Wander Lines by Michael Templeton (column)

“The world in which we live is so deeply sick, so inherently insane, that what appears to be normal or sane is the real insanity. Only a sick, insane person could exist in a world of such monstrous cruelty.“

by Eric Vanderwall (book review)

“The Sugar Kremlin presents another fine entry in the catalogue of Sorokin’s works available in English. Although The Sugar Kremlin is a sequel in a loose sense, it is not a bad entry point for readers new to Sorokin, and Joshua Cohen’s interview with the author…is especially illuminating.”

by David Estringel (interview)

“I am now in phase where I’m slowing down and trying to craft things that are a little more challenging for me.”

from The Comfortable Apocalypse by Robert Dean (column)

“I wish some hooded dudes would come down on horses, ready to fuck everything up. I’m down for that. We could use the break from continual genocide, class war, and a stagnant economy lurching toward depression.”

from Wander Lines by Michael Templeton

“The city and its pedestrians are now that mass of empty souls who form what the Invisible Committee describe as living in the grip of a specific kind of mood of distance, a mood best named in the Nietzschean term of the Stimmung, a void mood of the void soul.”

from “Beneath and Beyond the Art…” by David Estringel (column)

“I love painting about sex and trauma. These are subjects that every human being can relate to. I’m not afraid to explore them. Sex has brought a lot of joy, while trauma has brought sadness. The combination of the two makes for powerful, meaningful artwork.”