Fiction
February Contributors
David Agyei-Yeboah, Swetha Amit, Olivia Ardine, Brooklyn Armstrong, Khushi Bajaj, Sharon Bippus, Sacha Bissonnette, Danilla Botha, Camryn Brennan, Margaret Cahill, Cooper Clarence, Kalan Cordell, Enrique De Alba, Craig Demi, Tyler Efford, Andrew Eastwick, Kate Forbes-Riley, Christian Fuller, Jonathan Daniel Gardner, Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos, Kris Green, David Hinson, Michael Holtzman, Caroline Huckeba, D. J. Huppatz, Jonathan Jackson, Joelle Killian, Tom Koperwas, Jesse Lifton, JP Lor, Lana Lowe, Gracie Lyle, Andrea Marcusa, D.C. Martin, Finnegan McBride, Kathryne McCann, Tom Newcomer, Seth Parker, Christopher Kostyn Passante, Tif Robinette, McKenna Robison, John Sara, Eylie Sasajima, Shawn Scott Smith, Té V. Smith, Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, Rick Taliaferro, Hayden Taylor, Mary Thorson, Jack Timko, Max Wagner, Essi Ward, and Jon Wesick
February Highlights
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nothing and everything
Flash Fiction by Sharon Bippus
“We’re two guys past our prime looking for a thrill.”
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the creative process
Fiction by John Sara
“I keep a box of ideas stashed beneath my bed; misshapen balls of flesh I cut from my body and mail to my editor. (Um, thanks, but I didn’t actually ask you to do that).”
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camera obscura
Fiction by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece
“…you know what it makes me think of, those engravings of camera obscura where the outside gets projected in but backwards and upside down, like Plato’s cave…”
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grapefruit
Fiction by Margaret Cahill
“My father’s brain tumour changed everything for me. He collapsed at home a week after my thirteenth birthday and sunk into a coma he never woke up from.”
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foreclosure season
Fiction by Christian Fuller
“When Paul set his shoes on fire, we told him to piss it out. That, like, he’d better hurry. He was only supposed to light up the insulation we’d pulled out from the eggshell walls…but we were sixteen and drunk enough to fist fight god and things just had a way of happening.”
going…gone
by Walter Weinschenk
“The sea is a tumult, a terrifying process, and I’m too scared to venture out, too afraid to move, but too afraid to be alone…”
a tourist in green
by Brandon Yu
“Some of them take severed ears, scalps, and thumbs from dead VC and make necklaces out of them, which—even I have to admit—is a little tacky.”
in the menstrual hut
by Sumitra Singam
“Seema and I sit with our backs to opposite walls. As far apart as we can be in this tiny, circular space. She gets the benefit of the breeze from the open doorway – they fan her ankles that have become thick with her swollen sense of status.”
the collaboration
by Arthur Aronstein
“There were giant marble vulvas, impressionist fungal stalks with colorful throbbing veins, clitorises crafted with coils and still-life circumcisions. Patrons surveyed these works with hands over their children’s eyes, jaws slack, none stopping to look at the painstaking detail invested in each one.”
from the woman you become
by Kayla Cain
“When no more color remained outside the train window, you watched each tree pass and the mountains approach in shades of gray. You wished for a twinkling river, and realized Kelli almost never bathed anymore.”
zone of avoidance
by River Lucero
“And anticipation together, like sharing blood and breath together and shimmering in your chests together and BOOM! And BOOM!”
the effects of journaling
by Jack Uppling
“I’ve started writing down my dreams. People always say to do it, they say it’s good for your brain. My brain has been failing me lately and it’s frightening, so I decided to listen to them.”
all the kooks
by Ace Boggess
“The fight started right in front of her in the pasta aisle. Mary Ellen wasn’t close enough to hear if words had been exchanged…Everything was political, even the act of picking out linguini.”
how did marco get so fucked up?
by Timothy Petkovic
“He read David Foster Wallace and debated cutting his arms with a razor blade and procrasturbated obsessively, cumming eight, nine, ten times a night until his dick was flayed raw or shrivelled into a Greek-statue acorn…”
long monday
by Susan Brink O’Flaherty
“Vaginia leaks as she vomits into the street. A gust of hot wind blows whatever is exiting her mouth onto her brand-new, limited-edition Valentino-collab Birkenstocks.”
living water
by Zary Fekete
“He calls the future water alive. She looks down at the rope-burned rim of her jar and thinks, Alive isn’t always the same as easy.”
carnations, thrice
by Shrutidhora P Mohor
“Their fragrance is stifled as I enter. Injection fluids, antiseptic water bowls, used cotton balls, just washed pillow covers, half-consumed boiled rice with boiled potatoes, a dash of ghee. All of these get the better of the carnations.”
elena
by Alejandro Gabriel Leopardi
“Elena’s gone, and she’s not coming back…She left a clear reminder that happy people aren’t happy. Not all the time.”
the day she swallowed glass
by Ronita Chattopadhyay
“She was done with being quiet and submissive. “I will become tough,” she said out loud. She gulped down the remaining water. And then she noticed it – a crack at the bottom of the glass.”
roll over
by Steve Gerson
“Something is truly amiss, Johann. I sense an apparition, a spectral augury, a dark wraith . . . eavesdropping.”
the pain master
by Lior Locher
“Neutral face, clean-shaven. Eyebrows neat, hair lined up like a platoon. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. You both know the deal.”
lola; or fate and flightless birds
by Guinevere Ngozi Morgen
“There was something wrong with Lola. She thought that it might be her feathers, but her feathers gleamed…Only she could not fly.”
after the election
by Randall Perry
“That feeling when you step in a piece of dog shit on your way to work & you move off the sidewalk to the grass to wipe it off but it’s gotten into the treads on the bottom of your shoe & you know you’re going to have to scrape it out with a stick…”
sammy
by Jake Creps
“It’s been 25 years since I took Sammy’s life but only 6 days since I understood why. Maybe not why but how. The story I told everyone was a lie.”
caliwashigon
by L.G. Reed
“The coffee shop looked different as Rob Winkle approached it after a restful nap…Was this a dream? Maybe he was still on the couch, asleep.