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At Such High Temps
Fiction by Jennifer Fliss We’re looking at a field of charred tree trunks. Ghostly, blackened tall things reach into the sky trying to find the light. They’re not all dead, though some have fallen. Many have fallen, but quite a few are still standing. “The lodgepole pine needs fire,” the guide says. “At searing temperatures,…
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Me and My Boy at Pep’s Point
Fiction by Russell Hehn When I awake from my occasional horror and stare myself down in the mirror of my medicine cabinet, in my underwear, calming my boiling bones with tepid water from the bathroom sink, my mind heads on down Highway 49 where I rode in SUVs and minivans with graham crackers and gummi…
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One Sheep a Herd Makes
Creative Nonfiction by Kate M. Carey “Get Up. I need help with Snowball.” My mother shook my shoulder. It’s late winter in Ohio. Blowing icy crystals forced the farm animals into the barn. Not the best lambing weather. “C’mon on. Dress warm. It’s almost zero out.” She left my bedroom. I opened an eye to…
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Night Shift
Fiction by Katy Haas I’m working the night shift and counting the cigarettes when Marnie stops in. Out of everyone that works at the gas station, I count the cigarettes the fastest, using my thumb and pinky finger to tap the top of the packs as I count them two at a time, but I…
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Dateline Plot Twists
Fiction by Benjamin Drevlow It was the husband, no, it was the boyfriend, the babydaddy, the ex, the elicit Tinder lover, the hitman one of them hired. No, it was the colleague, the boss, the custodian, the mouth-breathing, pee-smelling tech guy. Probably it was the pimp, it’s always the pimp, no, the drug dealer, the…
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After the Nashville Shooting
An Essay by Emry Trantham I. It’s 2009. I am twenty-three. My husband will be turning twenty-four at the end of the week, and I’ve been working for the last month to get him the perfect gift. It’s his first birthday as a dad. I want to get him a handgun. He can use it…
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The Color of Bones
Fiction by Paul J. Garth Night I drove back, somewhere around Wichita, when the sun was falling off to the west, I realized I’d forgotten what my father’s face looked like. It’d been seven years since I’d last seen him, and aside from his phone call a few nights before, and the times I heard…
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Hear What We Want
Fiction by Jason Graff The Alley It wasn’t a garbage truck. Dad would show down against anything else: cars, SUVs, other pickups too. Beeping and cursing until they pulled into the nearest driveway or better yet, backed completely out into the street. The engine growled the whole time. He’d complain to the air afterwards about…
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Cornbread, Piss, and Figs: An Essay on Grief and Home
By Jessica Cory It’s nearing 8:30 PM the Sunday before Spring Equinox when I find myself in the darkened backseat of my husband’s red Outback weaving through the Blue Ridge Mountains with a hunk of cornbread in my left hand as my right rests on a bucket quarter-full of undiluted, pungent, piss. A note on…
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The Ties That Bind
Fiction by Colin Brightwell My half-brother’s parole officer called me up. Said Sean was getting out of the joint and had listed me as next-of-kin, that he needed a place to stay while he reentered society. I hadn’t seen the kid since he was a baby. Our old man, the bastard, died halfway through Sean’s…