Our Folklore Long ago, you were molten rock, and I— well, I spoke the language of bears. But now that I have been out of the forest for so long, all the words and grammar escape me, and I often fin...
New Fiction from Cameron McMillan: “Call Me Nobody. Let Me Live.”
I can still see his smile as I settle into my desk and the normal morning wave shuffles in. First comes the pinstripes of the best and the brightest, carrying their expertise and experience like an...
New Nonfiction: “One Woman’s History of Sexual Abuse in Prison” by Patty Prewitt
Missouri inmate Patty Prewitt has been in prison for almost 40 years. She is serving a life sentence for the murder of her husband, Bill, in 1984. The conviction, however, is problematic. The prose...
New Nonfiction: “A Bridge” by Kent Jacobson
Take me to the alley Take me to the afflicted ones Take me to the lonely ones that Somehow lost their way ...
New Nonfiction by Bettina Rolyn: “Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?”
I have come to do a writing residency at the Museum of Loss and Renewal in Molise, southern Italy, in a remote mountain village to escape the distractions of Berlin. Just as every writer does when ...
New Fiction by Michael White: “Eid Mubarak, Merry Christmas”
My eagerness propelled me up the airplane steps. Eleven years to the day. Well, technically eleven years and a day. We assembled for the meandering trip to Afghanistan on September 11, 2012 but did...
New Fiction by L.W. Smolen: “Dirty-Rotten”
Where mom and dad and me used to live in the Haight, from the brush in the empty lot across his street, with a BB gun, I shot a big, scary German Shepherd guard dog – right in his gonats. W...
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Cactus Tuna”; “We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays”; and “Reverse Run”
New Poetry from DA Gray: “Cactus Tuna”; “We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays”; and “Reverse Run”
...
New Fiction from Thomas Mixon: “Strong Feelings of Sympathy and Horror”
A little stoned, on the screen porch facing the invisible grunts of New Hampshire spring peepers. Something night, something woods, something long sleeve. Lou looks down into mostly darkness. They ...
New Nonfiction: Review of Christopher Lyke’s “The Chicago East India Company”
Gravitational lensing – as half-remembered from an article I read years ago, as confirmed courtesy of a recent Wikipedia dive – takes advantage of the presence of massive objects to sha...
New Poetry from Tanya Tuzeo: “My Brother, the Marine;” “My Brother’s Shoebox;” and “My Brother’s Grenade”
my brother, the Marine the recruiters come weeks earlier than agreed— arrive in alloy, aluminum with authority, military vehicle blocks our driveway announcing to the neighborhood they’ve co...
New Poetry from Sam Ambler: “Gnats” and “Made Him Strong”
GNATS Evening fire sparking over Sutro’s rim, igniting cirrus dragons drifting away from the sun. Jules and I, enthralled. Sitting placid on the stoop outside our home. Cuddling. They swarm out of ...
New Nonfiction from Patricia Contaxis: “Luminous Things”
It is late October and the season is turning. The morning chill is not the surface cool of fog, the chill you feel in summer here at Point Reyes National Seashore, but the deeper cold of coming win...
New Fiction from Mike McLaughlin: “For the Truth is Always Awake”
Krieger’s father left Salzburg late in life. He had never married and had no close family to speak of. After thirty years a banker, he yearned for something else. A friend in the Austrian for...
New Poetry from Shannon Huffman Polson: “On Orthodox Easter in Mariupol”
On Orthodox Easter in Mariupol We finished our jelly beans red and yellow, purple, green, the last bite of chocolate, unaware that over in Mariupol on this most holy day sleepless mothers cr...
New Poetry from Nidhi Agarwal: “The Goddess Incarnates;” “Cow Dust Hour;” and “Emancipation”
New Poetry by Nidhi Agrawal: “The Goddess Incarnates;” “Cow Dust;” and “Emancipation”
...
New Nonfiction: “Survivor’s Paradox” by Chris Oliver
When I first saw the photo of David Spicer in a 2009 Army Times, I was excited to recognize my friend there on the page staring back at me. The picture was closely cropped around his face, but I c...
New Fiction from Kena Ramirez Dillon and Francisco Martinezcuello: “Veterans Motorcyle Manual”
2022 Veterans Motorcycle Manual...
New Fiction from Peter Obourn: “Wild Horses”
Lee Harkness was supposed to meet this guy Smitty at a bar called Marty’s on 14th Street at a specified time. Lee was late because it was his first time in Dallas. He had trouble finding the addres...
New Poetry from Jeffrey Kingman: “Matriarch,” “Josephine Marcus Earp,” and “Marching: Sophia Duleep Singh”
MATRIARCH ninth great-grandchild spits up peas seventh and fourth declare themselves winners I bundle the children into categories high-shouldered daughters gobble minutes trikes in the hallway my ...
New Poetry from Laura King: “Orange”
ORANGE It’s June, and a few stubborn ones still hang on the trees. We stand on the back of the pickup to pluck one— so easy to peel, this old girl the sun has sugared since December’s sharp tang. N...
New Nonfiction from Leah McNaughton Lederman: “Man of Steel”
There’s a solid history of stupid when it comes to fireworks at our family cabin at the corner of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and—as Dad called it—West by-golly-stand-up-and-smile-when-you-say-i...
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Our Backyard Apocalypse”
We set small bowls of sugar water
on the garden’s edge. Bees were scarce
since the freeze which had almost finished
what the pesticides had started. Still,
some survived.
Poetry from Eric Chandler: “Hetch Hetchy”
Hetch Hetchy There are two signs on The towel rack. One says, “cozy” and explains that The towel rack Heats your towels. It’s next to the switch That fires up The electricity to the towel rack. Tha...
New Poetry from Lisa Stice: “Water Cycle”
No matter where we are, the oceans
meet us in some form.
I am small
and my daughter (who is only eight) –
is even smaller
and still, our dog is smaller
yet,...
New Poetry from Ben Weakley: “Beatitudes I,” Beatitudes II,” “Beatitudes III,” “Beatitudes IV”
Beatitudes I. The Lord blessed us with knowledge. Twin curses, good and evil. Why else plant the luscious tree there, where we were bound to find the fruit? The purple and shivering flesh ne...
Poetry by Amalie Flynn + Images by Pamela Flynn: “#150,” “#151,” “#152,” “#153”
SPIDER / 150 Thick in Louisiana swamps Atchafalaya Basin Hot cypress shooting out Stretching in that bayou Where pipelines Pumping black gold oil Cross across the swamp Like spider veins. &n...
New Fiction from M.C. Armstrong: Excerpt from Novel ‘American Delphi’
Note: M.C. Armstrong’s new novel, ‘American Delphi,’ will be out October 15, 2022 from Milspeak Books. It has been hailed as “riveting, wise, and wonderful.” Please fe...
New Fiction from Andria Williams: “The Attachment Division”
The Bureau for the Mitigation of Human Anxiety They were the survivors, they should have been happy, they should have been fucking thrilled (the President accidentally blurted that on a hot mic few...
New Nonfiction from Sari Fordham: “Mending”
Our pre-WWII house has two small bedrooms, a tiny closet in each. I feel virtuous when I fit my clothing into one, leaving my husband Bryan’s clothes to migrate between our daughter Kai’s closet an...
New Poetry from Virginia Schnurr: “Touchstone” and “Valentine for Lewis Carroll”
TOUCHSTONE My child’s fairy-tale quilt is frail: the wizard ripped, the prince bald, the fairy’s wing clipped. Only the wishing well and frog prince survived camp, college, the conception of my gra...
New Fiction from Eddie Freeman: “Gideon’s Thesis”
Gideon, a senior majoring in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz, fidgeted nervously. He wanted to write a senior thesis that could be turned into a podcast or miniseries. He had...
New Poetry from Marc Tretin: “Justin Alter, Slightly Drunk, Addresses Maya, Who Is In Egypt” and “Maya Ricci Alter After Excavating A Pyramid South Of Zairo”
JUSTIN ALTER, SLIGHTLY DRUNK, ADDRESSES MAYA, WHO IS IN EGYPT Now as I am hungover and queasy stumping about the tilting house and sappy as my face is green, Maya, your sculpture of Qetesh, that go...
New Fiction from J. Malcolm Garcia: “Viraj”
Viraj sat in a room behind the motel reception counter, eating a bowl of bhaat with his fingers when the desk bell chimed. He set the bowl down and opened the door. A man in a heavy green coat stoo...
New Nonfiction from Fabrizia Faustinella: “Infinitesimal Possibilities”
You are in the stairwell, standing with a few of your fellow medical students, waiting for that door in the basement to be unlocked. The smell of formalin and paraffin emerge from the hallway below...
New Poetry by Michal Rubin: “I Speak Not Your Language” and “Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad of Jijlya”
I, born from the womb of
my mother’s remembrances
wrapped in the cocoon
of her story[…]
...
New Fiction from Cameron Manning: “Glory Chasers”
May 3, 2009 After Captain Short returned from his training with the Australians, he scheduled himself to take leave the following week, which meant he’d be gone all of May. While I waited for him t...
New Nonfiction by Carol Ann Wilson: “Live Oaks”
‘Tis a fearful thing to love What death can touch. To love, to hope, to dream, and oh, to lose . . . by Judah Halevi 12th century philosopher and poet June 1991. I’m half-way up a seventy-fo...
New Review from MaxieJane Frazier: “Mapping Fault Lines in Kate Schifani’s Cartography”
Kate Schifani’s memoir, Cartography, maps faulty practices and question of fault over her year serving in Iraq as an advisor and logistician to the Iraqi military. In her dangerous deployed experie...
New Fiction from John P. Palmer: “Lasting Impacts”
Johnny felt the oak floor tilt sharply below him. He had no idea what was happening or why, and he was frightened. The tilt was steep, so steep that he felt himself sliding, then falling. He wanted...
New Fiction from Colin Raunig: “What Happened in Vegas”
Since getting back from deployment, Frank had gone soft. He was still a massive block of muscle, but the edges had rounded. Too much time off. Too much food and booze. He saw it in his reflection o...
New Poetry by Scott Hughes: “Still”
STILL I never thought of you as a hopeless romantic; this was news to me. Are you still meditating? Meditate on this: You can take the Mulholland Highway across the ridges of two counties an...
New Fiction from Benjamin Inks: “Jack Fleming Lives!”
Okay—let me set the record straight. It started as a bunch of rumors first, before we lost control of it. But it really started as a stupid word game at a mission briefing. “Your porn name!” LT beg...
New Poetry by Chris Bullard: “All Wars Are Boyish”
All Wars Are Boyish Autopilot on self-destruct, we went joy riding on tanks into the thermal wasteland. The static of roentgens played like parked ice cream trucks on the detection equipment...
New Fiction from Nancy Stroer: “Move Out”
I drum the steering wheel of the rental car with the flats of my palms. It’s the opening riff of a song by Yaz. It takes three notes, four—that blossoming into a fanfare of electronic horns, and I’...
New Poetry by Rochelle Jewell Shapiro: “Each Night My Mother Dies Again”
EACH NIGHT MY MOTHER DIES AGAIN Each night the phone rings— Your mother has passed. Each night I expect to be relieved, but night falls on night. Each night she is the mother who makes waffl...
New nonfiction from Rebecca Rolland: “A Letter to My Ten-Year-Old Daughter
“Something terrible happened today.” “At my school?” you asked. “No,” I replied. “But at a school, yes.” You asked how far away it was. You sat and b...
New Nonfiction from Dr. Anthony Gomes: “The Gun Culture in America: Will There be a Light at the End of the Tunnel?”
To fathom the Gun Culture and gun-related violence in the US, it is important to understand The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution, which protects the right of the pe...
New Fiction from Adrian Bonenberger: “Fort Mirror”
Getting posted to Fort Mirror was a death sentence. The most coveted of all postings, soldiers jockeyed for the honor, begged superiors to send them to the fort on patrols or did what they e...
New Fiction from Terry Sanville: “The Metallic Sound of Rain”
Just about every afternoon the wind came up suddenly, stirring the dust that blew through the screens of our company’s orderly room. “Get moving, Gorski,” the First Sergeant commanded. “Got it, Top...