Feel my body like an unattended blackness
a portal a kept sake
not meant for keeping settle me remove
the pillows and rupture me
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Category Archives: Issue 5
Nonfiction by Todd Gastelum
Well, when you reach your twenties, an invention called the Internet will come along. It’s complicated, but it’s sort of a combination of the library, TV, and Atari. Continue reading
Fiction by Jane Christensen
He feels the absence of the natural world. Seasons are reduced to a variation in coats and umbrellas. The cycles of day and night are revealed only in the size of the crowd and in subtle expressions he is not sure he can render. Continue reading
Poetry by McKenzie Lynn Tozan
I imagine this boy, the lotion on his hands, pressing
and releasing, and then the kiss—which opened up
every sense in the world. How he, too, could lean in
and start something small.
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Fiction by Karen Palmer
I have conditioned myself to ignore silence, trained myself to rely on what I see for an understanding of the universe and all that surrounds me within it. Continue reading
Poetry by Sophia Terazawa
Fiction by John Guzlowski
I remember how she used to get letters from her sister who survived the war and went back to Poland… My mom would take the letters and slip into the bedroom and close the door. She didn’t want anybody seeing her weep as she read them. Continue reading
Nonfiction by Juanita E. Mantz
It’s eight o’clock, and my dad’s still not home from work. Mom is making one phone call after another to the bars around town. I am on the sofa working on my Romeo and Juliet book report. Unlike most people, I like the fact that there is not a happy ending. Continue reading
Poetry by Ryan Black
He’s got eyes like wet cement. Sticking Junior is like finding your name in a graveyard.
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Nonfiction by Rae Theodore
I sit in the stall waiting for the mother to finish diapering her daughter. The angry comments that I had braced for as I entered the restroom and fast walked into the first available stall play in my head.
Hey! This is the ladies room!
Pervert!
Can’t you read!
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