HAGRIDDEN by Jen Julian
They called it a boo hag. It’s what Eva said was haunting her when I got her on the phone six years after I’d left Miskwa. I felt the same way every time I talked to her—nostalgic a little, but hurting with secret embarrassment—and it was always at some odd hour of the night when [...]
SATURDAYS AT THE PHILHARMONIC by Megan Staffel
Patsy Smith left Rochester, New York on a sunny Saturday morning intending to drive all the way to California. But after three and a half hours, crossing through an Indian reservation, she got lost. On a long, straight road, where there hadn’t been a route number for many miles, there was a sudden break in [...]
LENT by Paul Lisicky
Father Jed’s head was stuck in Lent. He said these words to himself as a kind of talisman. Otherwise, his head would have split in two. He sat on the chancel with Father Benedict, the assistant pastor, up on the priest’s seat. Why was he so torn up on the night of the Easter Vigil? [...]
NEW YORK TO PHILADELPHIA by Lynne Procope
Well I’m not supposed to see you looking I’m not supposed to stare straight into your eyes… – Lucero Let’s say Philadelphia’s a city constructed entirely of door knobs, one great opening, one endless turning into something new. Your voice is on the phone, love, is a rocks glass overflown with whiskey and burning. Your [...]
LIFT by Muriel Nelson
Doubt seems to be in. The worry drill whirs where the dote is. Where the face was a vacancy. And yet the ear is occupied waiting, for there are other root canals, so you (mis)heard. No doubt the fire’s hunger whirls its roar and weather down your ear while eating sky [...]
SPELL I by Mary Lou Buschi
After Louise Glück 1. Somewhere, my brother is traveling— The right side of his head a red-clawed tulip swallowing the cold. 2. Where to look— down the long expanse of each train car rocking through a dimly lit tunnel dark buckling around me as the car rises up above a city. When did I last [...]
HOOK ECHOES by Kevin Heaton
Sunshowers spit-shined the shark’s tooth that gutted Kansas’ only diamondback. You were just a puff adder feigning rattles— scavenging rat droppings with field mice in bales of switchgrass. I want tallgrass. I want a thunder god with flashes of ego— a two-storied sod house near an artesian well— flag-side-up roses. Wall clouds that squall more [...]
THE DANGERS OF TIME TRAVEL by Gerardo Mena
You wake up in the future and realize that everyone has evolved. People now have the head of a blue jay and the body of a shiny machine that whirs softly as its insides spin. You see two bird heads that look like your parents, but, of course, that is not possible. When they see [...]
MOLES by Matthew Haughton
Something had to be done about the moles; labyrinths stretched from the garden down to the hollow. Give moles an inch and they’ll burrow up to your door. So we dug holes in their paths and filled them with old coffee cans. Bleary eyed, dirty noses raised, down in the can they’d be covered in [...]
