by Catherine Lutz

“Winter has had its way with the bush on which the berry hangs, denuding it of its leaves and stripping the fruit of any seeming life.”

by Andy Betz

“I am a band that does not exist.  With no musical ability, I wrote songs for the singers never to sing.  I am working to book performances that will never occu…a quartet of nothing named, ‘The Useless Sig Figs’”

by Tony B. Cardiff

“I detest Meursault. At times, I was relieved he was fictional. An arrogant, socially irresponsible man. Yet, as I read, I felt a morbid curiosity…I drifted between repulsion and kinship. As if he were a mirror of who I once was.”

by Mohammad Tolouei

“Borges has a story in which a group of encyclopedists gather to write an encyclopedia of a fictional world—complete with its mountains, its seas, and its systems of weight. Then, little by little, that fictional world begins to take shape and come into existence.”

by G. M. Rowbotham

“Gay bars smell like poppers and loneliness. I can’t go in. Not because I’m afraid of who’s there—but because I’m afraid I’ll stay.”

by Meg Bloom Glasser

“I cut my mother off until she swallows a handful of pills and ends up in the psychiatric ward. My brother pressures me to visit her there. She wants California rolls and tweezers for her ingrown hairs.”

by Seth Frame

“My vision is perfect now, surgically corrected, but I sometimes miss the blur. There was truth in it: the way the world softened, the way beauty didn't need to be sharp to be real.”

by Julie Duck

“…my need to rescue others was leading me straight into the arms of danger, twice putting me under the same roof as future murderers.”

by Darci Schummer

“I saw myself through your camera’s eye, felt again that acute density between us, and I catalogued everything that had vanished with you.”

by Mohsen Askari

“He thought of rhythm again—not productivity, not ambition, not even discipline, but rhythm. That elusive alignment between the inner world and the outer one.”

by Christie Page

“I don’t give a damn about feminist think-pieces claiming breasts don’t define womanhood. I don’t want to hear about empowerment, or how we’re supposed to transcend our bodies. I care about my truth.”

by Lamont Neal

“Their freedom came with caveats, legal, social, spiritual. They were the early recipients of discrimination in housing, employment, and marriage. The canaries in the coal mine. You have your freedom, now can you have your dignity?”

by Lydia Hyslop

“The last time I saw her, she was still living at home, every inch of her countertops cluttered, the air stale with the scent of grocery store fried chicken and ancient ashtrays.”

by Emma Atkins

“you catch sight of two black eyes – a quick slip of orange. The fox cub winks at you and ducks through a gap in the hedge. Fuck you, universe.”

by Hirço Orsetti

“At the worst of it, I begged vague deities for a few more years. I wanted to rub up against death’s leg like a slutty cat begging for detrital scraps.”

by Patrick Johnston

“A king cannot provide succour to his people without nipples. A king cannot rule with nipples…Well. Nipple me this… what the fuck was he doing with nipples in the first place?”

by Holly Carignan

“We saw ass cracks and bare dicks, cleaned shit smeared on bathroom walls. We all laughed and sighed our exasperations, told our stories.”

by Zary Fekete

“I think of that old feeling under the lake, of weeds around my ankle, of being pulled up into light. Maybe love isn’t about rescue after all. Maybe it’s about staying close enough to reach if they call.”

by Reg Darling

“What lingers in memory for me, beyond the scarification of grief, is “My bowl is empty! My bowl is empty!” Was that not poetry? Was that not art?”

by Isaac Russo

“Mankind may dream of Icarus until the wax is running down our backs, but a god with paper wings will always fall.”