Issue 2016

Notice of Proposed Land Use Action

Notice of Proposed Land Use Action by Jennifer FlissThis is a notice to tell you that you will be removed from your house in sixty days. We understand it is the multi-generational home of your family, that your childhood heights and your mother’s childhood heights and...

Pacifica Interviews: Brit Bennett

Pacifica Interviews: Brit Bennett by Brit Bennett/Judy T. OldfieldBrit Bennett is a novelist and essayist. Her debut book, The Mothers, centers on a young woman from a tight-knit church community who has an abortion. Interspersed throughout, the elderly women of the...

Flooding the Moon

Flooding the Moon by David Dodd LeeIt's nothing, this rainunidentifiablychanging to snow on a shelf we can't quitereach. The years, child, theyears, some old man, his hands warped into curveddoves, says, in the voiceof the boy he once was. The sky and itsfrozen stars...

Finding + Destination

Finding + Destination by David Ishaya OsuFinding i find itin a bubble i speaka shadow acrossglasses i find itwhere there is nothingbut moonskin Destination the last time wasa kiss—they ate the fruiteyes open we playmorning by earbecause even a cloudhas...

Wishbone

Wishbone by Georgene Smith GoodinBurrell was dead two days before we thought about Spider. Miranda was supposed to choose Burrell’s clothes for the funeral, but she chickened out like she always did when things got tough. “I’ll do it,” I said when she called, even...

he says he’s maddecent: the vapors

he says he's maddecent: the vapors by Justin Monson--for L I want you but the you whoto think about me I really mean is the youtell your friends about me who should know that you're alland when I say you that matters in poem.I know now that...

On The Fifth Rib

On The Fifth Rib by S CearleyS Cearley is a former professor of philosophy and AI researcher in computer-derived writing. He currently lives eight inches above a river watching ducks, otters and herons. His chapbook "The Travesties of Plato" was published by...

Her Dance

Her Dance by Carol EllisThe stage is empty. The floor is quiet as the dancer’s face her face the dream of the dry fountain she walks past in the morning. The fountain dances water with a tall laugh and in her dream she throws a coin into the pool. Wishes living at the...

Botany

Botany by Rob CarneyI’m glad I know the ground’s a botanistand not just something that we stand on. Grow, it says, and there’s a sapling,then a tree globed out with peaches. Every autumn it says, Come here, let’s get those leaves off, baby.Kind of like science, only...

Six Variations Upon Ayn Rand’s Profession of Love for Her Husband, Each Concerning a Discrete Human Element

Six Variations Upon Ayn Rand's Profession of Love for Her Husband, Each Concerning a Discrete Human Element by Stephen M. SandersAsked if she believed she would see her late husband again after her death, Ayn Rand replied that if she did, she would have killed herself...

Taking Liberty

Taking Liberty by Matt KelseyThe year is nascent still, a foal fresh from another body learning its own. The temperatureflirts with the vague idea of zero. I’m being rezoned. There’s a new map drawn in my mind. I take a...

Your Man for a Prison

Your Man For A Prison by Peter ClarkeIt’s been about a year since I got into the prison selling biz. Sold my first prison to a toothless guy with family money. Said he’d use it to lock up dentists. Guy had no use for dentists. Not the first thing I’d do with a prison,...

Hustlers

Hustlers by T.C. JonesStar Wars was our obsession. During the winter our neighborhood became Hoth, throughout the summer it was Tatooine. When we explored the woods and streams behind our town’s quiet streets we searched for Ewoks in the trees. One thing was for...

Guillotine

Guillotine by Kaj Tanaka Reading fiction submissions for the online literary magazine where I am an assistant editor, it all feels so hopeless. I’m the guy who does the second reading of our submissions—the stories our volunteer readers have already rejected. My job...

Fight

Fight by Mercedes LawryPlayed out on a green field, square,or roughly so, the intersection of two boys,one and the other in conflict, tempers abraded. Was he wronged, this one, or caught in slant perception?Was he insulted, that one, at such ruinous assumption?The...

How Do I Fit This Ghost In My Mouth

How Do I Fit This Ghost In My Mouth by Anca Szilagyiafter Geoffrey Farmer at the Vancouver Art Gallery I wanted to tell her how she'd said, one blue caninestupid she looked, but buzzing bright in herthere wasn’t enough time. mouth. So bright whenThe...

Excerpts from ‘Glass City’

Excerpts from 'Glass City' by Nick Greer[ Lovers ] People in the city take lovers, how could they not? The evening fog comes on suddenly and old houses can’t keep heat though they do have working fireplaces. I once taught a student at the university how to open her...

The Origins of Poetry

The Origins of Poetry by Kevin HonoldArchaeologists claim that chance nicksaround the rim of a clay drinking bowlmay have suggested meter to a pair of postglacialdeadbeats squatting in one of the less respectable caves,eating burnt beans, damning the insufferable...

A Tea Party of Contemporaneous Proportions

A Tea Party of Contemporaneous Proportions by Brandon ChristopherBethany couldn’t have picked a better day to host her imaginary tea party because Vivian, her guest of honor as well as her mother, was having one hell of a terrible day. It had started that morning,...

Creative Non Contest Honorable Mention: Seven Cities of Good

Creative Non Contest Honorable Mention: Seven Cities of Good by Laura Madeline WisemanThey approach me en masse—blonde, under four feet tall, each carrying a stuffed animal bound by leash. They are so close, their shoulders touch. They may as well be linking arms, but...

Reward

Reward by Santi Elijah HolleyTrixie had been missing for nearly a week. My daughter and I made the poster together, using my computer and scanner and a photograph of Trixie as a kitten. The photo was a year old, but it was the most recent one we had. Fran, my...

After the Fact

After The Fact by Heikki HuotariOur secrets are on sale but just won't tip the scale however close we hold the cards, however, hearing bells, in post and rope and canvas corners into yellow plastic buckets we spit out however many perfect teeth. The self serve copier...

Some mornings I don’t want to put on clothes because I know I’ll eventually have to take them off

some mornings i don't want to put on clothes because i know i'll eventually have to take them off by Erica BrunnerI’m in a bathrobeand combat boots Lines tunnelinto my skin There are traceable veinsbeneath my décolletage Dark dog hair onwhite wool Green...

Sugar Blizzard of the Wishful Thought

Sugar Blizzard of the Wishful Thought by Alec HirshmanTo shrink the yard to a kind of room,the town to a draft in a hall,there's snow, lots of it. To figure myselfa shade, I flush behind a cigaretteand send my double-breath from the stoopto the smokestack. Bricks...

Floorboards

Floorboards by Jack C. BuckOf course I agreed, how could I not? Martin died when Eva, William, and Francis died out there on McKinley road. The morning it happened, Martin phoned me to leave work and drive over. I remember how the point where two sides of a wall meet...