by Eileen Porzuczek curvaceous bodies of femineitydrown in milky lavender wax.coating, molding flesh with divinity,all of her stand like trophy plaques. chop off her delicate head,sever her broad shoulders,and thick legs that fled—hold her between boulders. insert cloth candle wicksin dangling empty throats—summon unwanted ticks.snip to bleating goats. place each body on a pedestal…compare, burn,…
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The Properties of Water
by Lauren Harr This is what I want to tell you: I always wanted to be a father. I wanted the chance to do it the right way. To love with the kind of strength and unfaltering care that my mother gave us. Now, I am five years older than she was when she died…
Hegelian Wounds
by J. Peter Progar Along the highway, there are dead deerevery 300 yards. They’re wet and there’sno blood, just gray fur salted bythe State trucks. Men petition for a chanceto shoot the ones that aren’t dead yet.“Even the buzzards won’t touch them.”Some have their heads cut off,Taken home for mounting, or maybeEuropean Mounting if their…
In Our Midst
By Kim Farleigh The box-like houses most of the camp’s children drew had slanting roofs and picket fences under ice-cream clouds, cows, farmers, machinery, paths, roads, cars, tanks, corpses, and flames–The Seen–reproduced on mass. Hashim works, however, boomed with chance, yellow clouds, fusing into red, reappearing around purple, the permanent-recreation cosmos a work of abstract…
Begin with Rejoicing
by Alicia Hoffman Because all around us the drumrolls of drill bits are pummeling into old infrastructure, forkliftingthe dated shrubbery, making way for updates in landscape that speak more for this century. The hosta and the weeping cherry, maybe, because to live is to burn the memory of yesterday’s demolishment in the copper bowls of…
09:26
by Kate Lunn-Pigula Kirsty Myers was standing in Hashim’s room, in the care home, when she felt the first wave of exhaustion wash over her. Hashim was speaking with his interpreter, Leila, about something quite involved. They seemed to be having a complicated discussion and Leila wasn’t currently offering any English. Both Kirsty and Leila…
Bedtime Story
by Bill Stenson It’s not healthy for anyone to dwell on their own mortality, and Marsha Hamilton believed that, and had never been one to engage in such thinking. So long as I can chew my own food, wipe my own arse and do my weekly crossword puzzle, I don’t worry about going anywhere. This…
Taxidermy
by Alicia Hoffman I’ve killed myself a million times. Thinnick of knife blade. Hatchet. Musket. Saw. The metaphor goes: we are continuous. Re-born with a new skin. Better armor, bullet thick. And I’ve drummed the pelt. Tannedso many versions of what I no longer am. I mount the manikins on cedar planks.I shellac my specimens….
Freezer Burned
by Jabrie Johnson even if I knew what I know,I don’t think that would have stopped me.the oven of my heart wishes to bake you to perfection,perhaps it’s my fault for getting Burned.but it’s hard to prevent hypothermia,when there’s no Insulation in my mind. to compare your eyes to the ocean is Cruelfor the ocean…
If Loneliness Came in Shades of Gray
by Gryphon Akridge-Phillips The rain was Pinot noir.In the way murky cinereous clouds formed ablockade. Do you rememberSeptember 19th? How you sat faceless as aHollowgast in that carbon grayLa-Z-Boy. With a 1928 bottle of Moscatobought in a bargain counter. Which later turned into astringent, acidic vinegaroozing down rugged weathered lines of face. Overflowing, slate gray…