Issue 2015

The Humpback’s Wardrobe

The Humpback's Wardrobe by Timothy Day   On Saturday I awoke to find five of my hangers bent, the hooks askew this way and that. The hooks of a humpback’s wardrobe, Alice called them when I told her. “How would that work?” I asked, trying to picture it. “Not...

The Balloon or the Ballerina

The Balloon or the Ballerina by Scott Broker   20 April 1998 Mom was floating against the living room ceiling when I came home from school, so I dragged a chair from the kitchen and pulled her down. “Crazy old lady,” I said, attaching her ankle to the rope we...

Hoops

Hoops by Blair Hurley   I’ve inherited a notebook from my great-grandmother. It’s full of loose-tucked notes, scribbled on scraps and receipts. My great-grandmother was a writer; she wrote a book for children about growing up on the prairie, and a column for a...

Transient

Transient by Quenton Baker   Some [stars] are there but some burned out ten thousand years ago...You see memories. -Anne Carson We built gods real slick-smooth big god-looks on that stage big god-breath big god-sweat the bass pumped like priest-shrieks like pure...

The Waiting Dream

The Waiting Dream by Mark J. Mitchell   Enslaved by circumstances, to wait, without vanity, uncalculating and available, for the whim of the marketplace, to wait, without pleasure, for routine or for chance. —Joyce Mansour, "Practical Advice for Waiting"...

What I Kept To Myself

What I Kept To Myself by Ellie Rogers     Like in 7th grade when David Myers held in a sneeze until his left lung collapsed; the oil slick of his trapped irritation spilled across his esophagus, and his alveoli, like fleeing fall geese, pumped clogged...

When My Parents Were Hippopotamuses

When My Parents Were Hippopotamuses by Alex Gallo-Brown   When my parents were hippopotamuses, they grew tiny immaculate strawberries and wore them on their fingers like rings. They didn’t have to taste them— they knew that they were extraordinary. The president...

Look and Leap Contest Winners Audio

Look and Leap Contest Winners Audio The winners of our 2015 Look and Leap Contest, as read by Managing Editor Courtney Johnson at the release party for Issue #6 at Gallery 4Culture. "Death's Fabulous Remains," Barbara Harroun"Branching," Kevin McLellan...

Release

Release by Talia Cohen   The thirty burros were the last straw. I already couldn’t sleep because the road kept unspooling in front of me whenever I closed my eyes, and Thomas’s macaroni-bean special added its own sour notes to my internal chaos. I launched myself...

Like Birds, We Will Fly Away

Like Birds, We Will Fly Away by Amy Foster Myer   My grandson called in the middle of the night, incoherent. Before I had the phone to my ear, he was already talking like we were in the middle of a conversation, his voice one jumbled note, long and low. I...

Deployment

Deployment by Asha Dore   At the dock, which is really a concrete platform edging into the Atlantic, hard blue waves whip up sending a pale mist across naked ankles or nude hose or the hems of stark white pants. Some of the other families have hired photographers...

Spirits of the Motherland

Spirits of the Motherland by Jim Davis   Xena Warrior Princess with an iron bra sprays Downy wrinkle release on khakis & I say thank you. I am gentle. There’s a little nipple on my new pen so I can draw on my intelligent pad, 15 dreams of when I was a violent...

The Elm

The Elm by Chris Campanioni   This is a story that doesn’t end well. It doesn’t begin well either. I received the first suicide letter in 2014. Maybe it was a year earlier. Maybe it was 2015. You hardly know me, the notes often began, but I feel as if I know you...

The Search Function

The Search Function by Adrienne Brock   Sam had asked what my favorite subject in school had been one night in our bed. “History,” I said. “Only it wasn’t called that. It was always ‘social studies’ or ‘civics.’” He was shocked. Genuinely shocked. But I do. I...

12

12 by Rose Swartz     All her teeth are breaking                                As he pretends to read her palm the scholars say we can’t trust chance           she hates him but chance is more than a force                    when the hate reaches the vortex...

Fire and Milk

Fire and Milk by Andrew Rhodes   The Civil War was a very frightening event. It was the first ancient modern war of our time, and those involved experienced shortages of foods like milk. Some of the soldiers had nothing to their names but their guns and the...

Arms

Arms by Matt Rowan"   Everything in the school was normal from the outside. It was normal on the inside, too. There were just a few subtle differences distinguishing it from most schools you’ve probably seen. And one major...

Little Switzerland

Little Switzerland by Ian Walters   Now Jenny is chanting, not out loud, chanting in her head, chanting for the last half hour. Rain’s all right, rain’s all right. She follows the road up into the cloud and within minutes the dash is muddy and her Dijon-yellow...

I Turned Out Pretty Good

I Turned Out Pretty Good by Sean Gill   I was thinking about raising a kid, but I figured I’d better try a dog first in case I bungled it so I’d only spoil an animal instead of a human being. I didn’t want to read any books on the matter, because I didn’t want to...

You Must Believe In Spring

You Must Believe In Spring by Aaron Bennett   but count on eating at least one bad clementine this week— its peel a siren’s call like the glow of buildings with unblinking eyes. You must believe in spring but you live vicariously through your city’s football...

Paleontology

Paleontology by Lydia Copeland Gwyn   We flipped through the section on extinct forms. My sister Louise wanted to see the Saber-Toothed Tiger and the American Mastodon. She wanted to draw their tusks in the black sketch book that came in her Easter basket. Every...

University of Iowa Museum of Natural History

University of Iowa Museum of Natural History by Catherine Pond   Under a replica of a mammoth sloth, you place my hand on your stomach and I feel the baby kick. I look at a diorama of the Plains Indians, imagine a tornado sweeping across their cardboard empire,...

Afro-Seattleite Fragment #15: Jimi Hendrix Plays “The Star-Spangled Banner” – Woodstock, 1969

Afro-Seattleite Fragment #15: Jimi Hendrix Plays "The Star Spangled Banner"--Woodstock 1969 by Malcolm Friend “...this was only the very beginning of a long, violent summer.” —Aaron Dixon, My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain Distort the note....

How To Disappear

How To Disappear by Julie Morin The bus charged along a solitary stretch of cracking asphalt that cut through the buff Nebraska plain. It was almost winter, the wind whipping and dry, and still no snow. Kylie looked out the window at the barren landscape, watching the...

Triptych

Triptych by Joan Wilking Benjamin Bullard IV (still known as Benji to his family and friends) has boiled his life down to a series of lists. They were his last girlfriend’s idea. “Focus. Focus. Focus.” Karleen said. “Lists saved my life.” All of her suggestions about...

King and Queen

King and Queen by Melissa Gutierrez When she finally calls I have just had a new dishwasher installed, just shaken the Sears man’s thickened hand and shown him out the door. I am still watching him through the blinds as he gets inside his painted van when the phone...

Ghost Story

Ghost Story by Kayla Rae Candrilli Margaret, with the longest blonde hair in Wyoming county, took over 30 stabs with a buck knife— her body swallowing the blade again and again. Her jealous man wrapped her in a burlap sack,...

Suckered

Suckered by Lowell Jaeger I’m trying my best to figure which move suckered me most. The Gorilla Hug. Double Reverse. Reverse Double Reverse. Or the Captain Jack, which tortured my elbow behind my back. Then he’d cut me down with the Lumberjack, drop me flat-faced on...

What’s Confusing

What's Confusing by Willie Fitzgerald In the aisle with canned vegetables, pickles, tomatoes, and pasta sauce, they reached their mutual breaking point. I don’t understand, she said. I don’t understand why you would feel that way...

Excerpt: “King of Joy”

Excerpt from King of Joy by Richard Chiem Someone hands Corvus a Polaroid-it’s a photo of herself she doesn’t recognize-and the boy who gives it to her is the chubbiest at the party. The photo feels like a gift from a nightmare,...

Field Trip

Field Trip by Catherine Fisher Taxidermy wolf melts into rug spine fails when its made to hold you up strong. The boy told me he said this wolf he loves America he wears and breathes America, I point out his shell hands with Uncle Sam’s fingernails sharpened to a...

Countable Minutes

Countable Minutes by Kyle Ellingson 6:06 p.m.—walking home from bus stopI was standing around at an intersection, no traffic in sight, waiting for the walk sign to invite me lawfully across. A woman my own age, dressed in my same length of autumnal peacoat (tall...

Three Rabbits

Three Rabbits by Barrett Bowlin I haven't told you this one, but my vet let something spill the other day when we were talking. She told me about how she'd lost it after putting down some kid's bunny. The child had gotten it as a birthday present and treated it the...

Busboy

Busboy by Ian Denning True had that end-of-the-night feeling: the tired eyes, the ache in the arches of his feet, dried sweat that clammed his black pants and cheap black polo to his skin. He and Lindsay were drinking their shifties. Their table was close to the...

Everything

Everything by Sarah Brown Weitzman Everything was his. Everything had his nameEvery flower. I hadto take his wordfor it. Sky, earth, water,even the air his choosing.Every single creature,even the snake.Only hiswords in my mouth.My own name. Whythen is it so hard to...