Contents
- Tell It Slant by Mary Buchinger
- Hail by Cathy Clay
- A Soul Song for Interstitial Cystitis by Christa Fairbrother
- Ephemera by Maryke Burger
- these prickly troops got my back by Abbie Doll
- Joke by Olivia Rose
- Martina by Sydney Mayes
- Ode to a Pink Candle’s Joy by Mir Rose Lawson
Fiction
While a week’s worth of laundry spins inside my mother’s washing machine, we swipe through potential matches on that dating app, the one for post-menopausal women seeking love or something like it, a close mimic. Her desires are clear enough. Retired male, preferably her height or slightly taller, bird boned and big brained, her exact […]Birdie, how long has it been? It feels like an eternity. After high school I saw you a couple of times coming back home to the lake, boating and skiing, going out on the jet-skis, sunbathing on your dock, right next to ours. Then poof.Non-Fiction
Everything seems peaceful and under control. We sit on the floor of our apartment, wooden blocks and toy trucks passing between us as we create projects guided by Aaron’s imagination. A fanciful, even abstract, version of the George Washington Bridge rises from the wooden floor in tribute to the most recognizable landmark of our neighborhood. […]Seven Ways to Slake Your Thirst
Maybe you’re ten years old and manning a lemonade stand with your best friend. You’re wearing a rectangle-shaped lavender sundress you love that will not fit by next summer, because you’re at that age when growth is suddenly relentless and in all the wrong directions. Did you lug your boom box—one of your prized grown-up possessions—to the corner to liven up the scene, turn […]Poetry
Let’s say truth is an airplane with jet fuel windowsFrom where I hail, Sunnyside, poor kids teased other poor kids for being poor. Wars and progress lured black folk out of California, Louisiana, but, mostly, elsewhere Texas. Quarter horses strode alongside Monte Carlos and El Dorados. Bobby Bland and Johnnie Taylor were prophets. On New Year’s Eve, chitlins strangled the air and didn’t relent till King Day. Old steppers, like Daddy, […]A Soul Song for Interstitial Cystitis
Do prunes miss being plums? Well hung in bunches plump, purple bumps blooms buzz-in the bees then plucked to dry alone shrink, shrivel, sugar-bled black sheep of the dried fruit family, apricots, orangely luscious, live on in trail mix Want to read more? Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine.A piece of paper marks your first breath and the measurements start printouts point out goals scored and games lost records are kept of pennies spent and pennies saved Intelligence as a quotient counts for what no one knows calories, reps, laps are counted and compared on graphs where you are plotted as one of many […]these prickly troops got my back
we took an arizona hiking trek drove through the mountains— a phrase which is the perfect exhibition for our species’ destructive capacity and while we didn’t make the road we still made use of it following the winding asphalt not knowing where it’d lead nor where we ourselves were headed but somehow still knowing this […]A pair of severed legs walks into a bar. Two severed arms greet the legs at the counter. Legs and arms don’t have mouths, so they play handsie and footsie. I’m sure you can imagine what it might look like. Plus, the legs still have their feet, and they’ve learned to point their toes. (Makes the exchange more efficient.) At this point in the story, I cannot […]somewhere between shame. and the hornet’s nest. i unroll my stockings before church. nylon that cannot forgive. the sharp of thumbnail. or the clumsy angles. my foot makes on the way. to reinforced toe. there is not enough. flounce in the world. for my mother. my body under. her creative direction. a bolt. wound tightly. with tulle. above church door. hornets. plotting their revenge on a lawn of sweet-spined aphids. in the quire. […]O drippy dilly-dally- dancy mistress of love- mancy, spark in me your secret to sloughing off your form. O sweet-soot, singe my dysphoria-dipped edges, puddle my teenage shame on the floor. O paraffin prophetess, promise me a future where I flow like you, know like you that the warmth I seek glows deep in my […]