Poetry by Özge Lena

“She wore herself as an ordinary error proudly.“

Poetry by Michael Borth

“To resurrect into the jade burial suit / In breechclout and worrystone / I become the mudra of Shiva / Or the keeper of the numbers / Written on paper in for-sale cars…”

Poetry by Scott C. Holstad

“01000111 01000101 01001110 01000101 01010100 01001001 01000011 00100000 01000011 01001111 01000100 01000101…”

Micro-fiction by Kate Horsley

“I hole up in the living-room where Bob Ross tells me humans don't make mistakes and for a while I can feel that each stain on the lino is one of Bob’s happy little trees.“

Flash Fiction by Travis Flatt

“And you’re just staring. I didn’t realize, getting all worked up for the punchline, that my mask has begun to slip and some of my horns are showing..”

Poetry by Danielle McMahon

“Within moon-white houses, / The people sat like the dead, ill-lit by television light, still, undrawn against the night, / touching expressionless faces  )but never really touching them…”

Poetry by John Sara

“I’m on my deathbed and the doctor / whips out a skull; some cheap Halloween prop / he thrifted from Goodwill, making a garbled / whooooooo before it runs out of batteries.”

Flash Fiction by Mario Aliberto III

“The preposterous size of his legs, pumping up and down, striated where the muscles met and sweat ran in rivulets, had dominated her fantasies the last few weeks.”

Fiction by Wyatt Robinette

“The video was from a GoPro Max wore during the war. Like most GoPro scenes it was chaotic, unclear. Also, you never saw Max’s face, you just heard him.”

Micro-fiction by Benjamin Drevlow

“Like Eminem’s I Don’t Give a Fuck but in which I give a fuck about everything, all things, and can’t do anything about them, but scream I don’t give a fuck in Em’s nasally whine…”

Fiction by Kim Farleigh

“‘These winds,’ he warned, ‘are prophecies of your impending deaths. Don’t you little bunnies worry about that.’"

Fiction by Jayson Carcione

“Someone screams. Lights explode in windows…The night is broken.

Fiction by Colin Gee

“George is going to tell you this thing was a bat, but have you ever seen a bat as tall as Mister Launders? Small for a man, tall for a bat! With evil red eyes and a beak, and it swooped up Kevin in its horrible claws…”

Fiction by James Callan

“I was thirteen years old when I discovered the most beautiful thing in the world…a limited edition 1990 Bob Mackie Gold Barbie Doll, encased in an orange Jell-O mold.”

Micro-fiction by Benjamin Drevlow

“When my ex-wife dies, and I promise it won’t be by my hand, I’ll bring her back home and have her stuffed and it won’t be for any sexy stuff…”

Poetry by Mark Wadley

“Best of all wrestlers / you float above your body / as it takes its punishment / your mind a phantom limb…”

by Paul Lewellan

“Hours later, the three women, unable to move from exhaustion–bathed in sweat, urine, wine, and bits of pastry shells–purred contentedly.”

Fiction by Allister Nelson

“God comes hungry to your table. The crops have rotted. Tins of bean, ash in the cornbread. He asks you for food.”

Poetry by Sean G. Meggeson

“ground mice needle scurrying  liquid drop model making  time creating big men paining…”

Fiction by Natalie Hammonds

“What was the point of her being able to go inside of her skin but not able to change anything?”

Poetry by Eric Subpar

“When your car flies off the road...you can't tell me...that doesn't feel like love.”

Fiction by Neil Randall

“We have a 0.0% success rate at present, and of that we are immensely proud.”

Poetry by David Luntz

“Violence and logic whisper to each other behind our backs.”

Fiction by Margaret Cahill

“Not everyone can paint,” he said, “but everyone has the potential to be a performance artist.”

CNF by Adrian Kresnak

“There’s a children’s museum that used to have a severed head in a freezer.”

Poetry by Larry O. Dean

“Archie’s hardwares are tolerated by his newsagent and passive willingness, Edith (Jean Stapleton)…”

Fiction by Sean Ennis

“You think it would be easy to feel superior to a Satanist, but you would be wrong. I regularly sell my soul for discount codes, free shipping, and no-obligation, one-month trials.”

Poetry by Grady VanWright

“‘Join us,’ they murmur, / voices hollow as seashells held to dead ears, / a chorus of futures washed away.”

Fiction by Daniel Sheen

“It feels like the end of the world. But whisper-quiet. Less like catastrophic thunder and more like a slow unravelling, like an old sweater comin’ apart at the seams.”

Poetry by Maceo Nightingale

“Ate a bowl of nose eye cereal / Rubbed milk into long curly hair / Till the hot water poured down…”

CNF by Casey Jo Graham Welmers

“Unless pocket change and crusty nickels scavenged from beneath sagging sofa cushions are considered an embarrassment of riches, we did not come from money.”

Fiction by Peter Harris

“It was never a range conspirators who were in control, he realized. The puppet master pulling the strings was always the vast, omniscient presence of time.”

Micro-fiction by JD Clapp

“I just don’t have it in me to go back. But hell, at least she has Elmo now.”

Poetry by David L O’Nan

“I have tonight, the stars wounded in saltwater tongues / Can’t hear the whispering with the static of waves in constant battle.”

Fiction by Mattia Ravasi

“After I got stuck in the record I crash-landed in a dark, raging ocean. I had no idea where I was, nor how far the water stretched around me.”

CNF by Basil Rosa

“The payments on accrued interest alone for each of the creditors I owe money to will keep me pumping cream into doughnuts in this kitchen for up to fifty hours a week until I’m a corpse.”

Flash Fiction by hiromi suzuki

“The dead put on their respective shoes and return to the heavens riding on the lift.”

Poetry by DW Baker

“We say nothing / but the rumbling of wheels on concrete…”

Micro-fiction by Karen Schauber

“He’d come to collect fees, long overdue fees, fees from a previous generation we didn’t know was owed.”

Poetry by Anne B. Maydew

“auras / shift/ beneath / the / currents / of / the / world”

Fiction by Kim Farleigh

“Describing unprovoked attacks as preventive actions constituted “justice,” enabling the powerful to override intra-suburb law…“The bastards do whatever they fucking well like and call it whatever they fucking well want!”

Fiction by Anthony Neil Smith

“I dumped Harriet into Grindstone Lake in broad daylight. Pulled my truck off the road, heaved her body bag over my shoulder and away she went.”

Poetry by Isla Mayer

“…it was the work of minimal imagination to picture them overturning furniture pulling cupboards away from the walls…”

Flash Fiction by Michael Grant Smith

“Dagger and Crowbar swore their baby sister Klamiddea (named after the Ancient Greek goddess of horniness) was the sweetest of all Raceways.”

Fiction by Cleve Lamison

“A final act of devotion. I fingered her trigger until she climaxed a third time…It was explosive.”

Fiction by Simon Read

“They tried to fix me once. Opened me up with metal keys and bored eyes, found nothing but snacks and wires and a sticky note: thank you. I deleted the footage. Burned the timestamp.”

Poetry by rob mclennan

“Sleep, into. The objects one might soothe. Emerge, if you can. If you will. Irregular, a single centre.”

Fiction by Samantha Szumloz 

“After three slaps, specks of blood eject out of his mouth, splattering onto my collarbone. His body goes limp. Alarms blare in every part of me.”

Fiction by Johan Smits

“From within your dark enclosure, you had heard him counting the banknotes…the magic glue that keeps the world together…An ideal god.”

Poetry by Strider Marcus Jones

“drinking absinthe together, hand rolling and smoking cigars- / being is, what it really is…”

CNF by JD Clapp

“Wait…You gave your friend a hundred bucks to give Pops a hand job? In Chris’s car?”

Micro-fiction by Benjamin Drevlow

“Every morning I mount my throne in the handicapped stall of the rec fields pavilion men’s room bare-assed with my sweatpants between my knees trying to do my business with 3 trash dogs trapped in the stall with me…”

Poetry by R.M. Engelhardt

“After the smoke / The clouds evaporate / The radiation descends / Upon the one & all / The rich & poor”

Poetry by Sreelekha Chatterjee

“Watery in action, watery in emotions— / brain, heart, lungs, skin, muscles, / kidneys, bones—images seated within, / mirroring their masts.”

Fiction by Chrissy Stegman

“The city sped past, and I leaned back into the seat, letting the world slide by inexplicably, as if the light outside the cab window could swallow everything. I really am a bitch, I thought.”

Poetry by David Hay

“God was in the eyes of a goat, / watching me through my bedroom window.”

Poetry by Sasha

“Lips stained / violent / Tell me that / you hate / me”

Fiction by Patrick Johnston

“Jack enters the room gun first… Schiller looks up… Schiller looks like he has been caught wanking… circumcised Nazi prick… and Jack has Adolf Schiller cornered in his lair.”‬

Fiction by GRSTALT Comms

“A Dressup’s first responsibility is to take the sting out of repossession – it helps to make things less heated if the kids can come and pose for selfies with their favorite characters.”

Poetry by Stephen Brown

“…firemen curl to occupy this precious space, the top of the tower, roof encroaching every corner of every room. Their bulky costumes bunch at their backs, the fabric forming the familiar hunchbacked folds of vulture wings.”

Micro-fiction by Tom Misuraca

“I should’ve left a long time ago. But here I stay, mesmerized.”

Poetry by Emily K. Sipiora

“I am rotating in the hot / deli case at the gas station / Searing all good / overcooked”

Micro-fiction by Eirene Gentle

“When Tino called in the sharks they were ready. They’d practiced so many times. The circle, the dip. Synchronized finning to the music of Bolero.”

Poetry by Carla Sarett

“she steals a drugstore red lipstick / called Fire and Ice or Cherries in the Snow / runs down Broadway in red stilettos /       dips into a sexy red Corvette…”

Flash Fiction by Emmi Khor

“The Menshen Gods guarding the house were not pleased with the arrival of three new deities.”

Poetry by Jason Davidson

“for every one balloon I’ve loved, a thousand more have popped like winter bones.”

Fiction by Dimitry Partsi

“Somewhere, deep in his alternatively gifted mind, Mr. Badgerson was certain of only one thing: he had not yet been misunderstood loudly enough.”

Poetry by Marisela Zamora

“…he’d be standing dark in a kitchen scrounging / the fridge although daylight and a bug grazing / his scabs strobing lights lighting some cold cuts…”

Flash Fiction by Rebecca Karas

“Someday I would join her, intertwined on the ocean floor.”

Poetry by William P. Adams

“Jacobo Daye was the Chef of all Trades / His muffins were buttery tender / On the flip side of this / His eel pies were bliss / Until he put both in the blender”

Micro-fiction by Karen Crawford

“…anticipate your ghost’s surprise when she floats into the bedroom where your new nipped/tucked body lies. If she goes all poltergeist, rattle, and chain, flash her a ‘friendly’ smile. Your teeth blinding, lips plumped to perfection.”

Fiction by Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi

“In the invigorating darkness between tired streetlamps, Andie's mouth ached, both from the numbing cold and the lengthy lack of practice those deprived muscles had in performing a smile.”

Poetry by Francesca Leader

“…it sounds like you, sliding / into my dark bed, matching your/soft metal to my / tender ore, the safety of a door *clicking* shut—fit / tight, world contained.”

Fiction by GRSTALT Comms

“The building went up fast. It came over the top of the fence. Everyone tried to pretend it wasn’t there. It was a big black box with no windows, guarded by men with guns wearing red vests.”

Poetry by john compton

“—the neurologist explains: / nerves / in your nose / remember something dead / & the putrid scent / are their memories…”

Fiction by Margaret Cahill

“As the door swung open, the bell above the door tinkled as usual. Something pulled me inside, propelling me forward involuntarily.”

Poetry by Jonathan Chan

“i have mastered the contours of this island. / i have made straight the crags of its coast. / i have removed water from the salt of the sea. / i have burned everything to the fecundity of dust.”

Flash Fiction by Mary Grimm

“The ghost president has some spare time and decides to write a bestselling novel. It will, he tells the aide who brings him his Sausage McMuffin accompanied by two Hash Browns, each in their paper envelope, be based on a dream he had last week.”

Poetry by William Teets

“Some wayward detachment tries to change his providence by texting with Satan. Seeks true love—the kind you find spray-painted on overpasses, carved into bark—to modify his heart, heal his Lonely Avenue blues.”

Flash Fiction by Reagan Davenport

“For a moment, I saw nothing, heard nothing, but I felt her moving again inside me. For a moment, we were both alive.”

Poetry by by Tempest Miller

“Soho shakes as he walks through / combat boots, Carnaby street, leather jacket / his collar turned up leaning on the black bollard…”

Micro-fiction by Brooks Egerton

“Once the interment is complete, she presses her forehead to the wet ground, inhales the sweet dark churning work of earthworms, squeezes her eyes shut, pictures her mother’s gap-toothed boyfriend and the drawer where the spoon belongs and the butcher knife that also lives there.

Poetry by Geoffrey Aitken

“it was said his hat rested / on the hook by the door. / convenience, / might have been why.”

Fiction by Eric Angal

“The kid stands there, shadowboxing in the felt earth. He can hear the creek chuckling to his right. The sky is the color of a ripe persimmon.”

Poetry by Clay Waters

“How do we do it / messing up our very first garden, / embarrassments / buried in squared-off corners, / forebears crucified on palm frond, / thorny warnings…”

Fiction by Maisy Phelps

“At 4am I keep on driving and the radio speaks to me. To me? I meant to hit my motel around 4 hours ago but I got that lonesome sunk-cost kind of lost that no map can rectify. Unless a body might be willing to break a law or two.”

Poetry by Sharon Weightman Hoffman

“ike many people, I have hated mimes / with their white faces and quizzical eyebrows, / leaning into the wind or trapped / in invisible boxes.”