The Stranger by Virginia Watts By the light of an open-hearth fire, Garth squeezes the contents of his coat pocket. It is not unusual for him to keep his coat on after a long, frigid walk home from the tavern. Takes time to warm the deepest bones. Even if his mother...
In the Water by J.P. Kemmick A report on lake monsters in the fourth grade. The memory of Blake Willis, a boy we’d known all our lives, who walked into the lake early that spring with his dad’s dumbbell tied around an ankle. The creeping, steady suspicion...
A Hole is Just a Vacant Dot by Sarp Sozdinler The day the sinkhole appeared in our front yard, the objects in our home vanished one after the other: Mom’s candy-colored spatulas, Dad’s citrusy Old Spice. Clementines rotting in the wicker basket. We noticed the...
Differential Force by Dayna Bateman Set a bike loose, riderless, with a gentle slope beneath it to give it speed, and the bike will remain upright regardless of terrain. Rough road or no, the bike will correct itself when the world goes wobbly and all sense would...
3 Poems by Christine E. Hamm [exorcism and purificatory rituals]* Look through the mesh — today the sky is white. Nine signifies judgement day in Islamic Number Theory. Rain yesterday; we imagined the drops cold, hard, sometimes soft. The green was throbbing. ...
Brave Woman Keeps Wolves from Body of Dead Husband ¹ by Ryan Burruss The September night was cool without being cold, and as she paced through the amber firelight, an unwelcome, wayward word alighted on her tongue: pleasant. Disgusted by the sentiment, she dragged her...
