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Boys on the Bridge
Fiction by Jon Sokol Sebastian’s phone buzzed in his pocket at 4:20. He glanced over at his grandmother who sat on the crippled couch. Her hands were buried in the pockets of her threadbare house coat and she seemed completely engrossed in the slap fight taking place on Springer. Carly was lying on the floor […]
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Trusting Them, Trusting Ourselves
A Review of Tommi Parrish’s Men I Trust By Helena Pantsis Opening up on a support meeting for alcoholics and people impacted by alcohol, the graphic novel Men I Trust by Tommi Parrish immediately draws you in with its vivid and emotionally cogent watercolour art style. Tackling themes of recovery, gratitude, and queer relationships, Parrish […]
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Along the Wires
Fiction by Amelia Franz On one side of the register stood miniature bottles of Fireball and Jack Daniels, on the other a stack of fundraising flyers for the family of a man killed out on 182, rear-ended by an over weight cane truck bound for the Raceland mill. Greer refilled the scratch-off dispenser case, then […]
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The Fractured Mirror: Tell Me the Biggest One You Know
By Edward Karshner My day job is researching the intersection of time and folklore. I study how stories reveal an understanding of ourselves in time. Do we flounder in, what David Southwell calls, “the warped gravity” of nostalgia? Or do we founder under the crushing weight of fatalism? In folktales, I’m always looking for a […]
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The Mayor of Leicester
Fiction by Julia Watson The mayor had gone missing. Nobody had seen him in over a week. In a town as far-reaching as Leicester, it was custom to spot one’s neighbor only at the Ingles. The land was large, well-soiled. Horses and goats and chickens mingled and mozied across fenced hillocks, while their keepers kept […]
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Yesterday is Today
A Review of Leah Angstman’s Shoot the Horses First By Alex Carrigan In her new short story collection Shoot the Horses First, Leah Angstman compiles sixteen stories set across America’s past, primarily by exploring the lives of putatively unexceptional figures in the 19th century. Angstman’s tales transcend time and place to present stories to which […]
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Healthy Habits: A Parable
By Valerie Peralta Once upon a time there was an ordinary woman who wanted two things. She longed for a body that mirrored the svelte images she saw clad in bikinis on Instagram. A flat stomach flanked by taut arms and legs. And she desired to pen poems and stories that captivated the hearts and […]
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The Girl on the Unicycle
Autofiction by Jay Parr CN for racism and hate speech. Me and Jimmy was riding bikes first time I seen her. It was last weekend of summer break, school starting back up in a couple days hanging over our heads like a goddamn prison sentence, so we was living life, reckless, desperate, like we ain’t […]
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Country Craft – Let’s talk: An Approach to Writing Conversations
By Stuart Phillips Late summer we transplanted thirty hosta from our front walkway, wheeling barrowsful to more welcoming spots in the shade. As my wife and I planned the new plantings, we went round and round with competing combinations before we realized that what she really wanted was a lavender hedge, and what I really […]