I like you like mischief, an ‘i before e’ moment, the movement of my heart butterflying, battered, flayed and wired up to monitors and X-rays. When you asked me what’s at stake here, I only heard cake, or was it betrayal, the way daylight holds failure in stasis between aphasia and sainthood? The weather is taking a break, is breaking over the lake, breaking news like communion bread, wine-soaked and warming your trachea. Someone just tracked solitude in on their boots, someone ran buckets of holy water until the font dried up. Sorrow sings its own jingle, packs the apple…
The Coachella Review
but my Sunday School teacher says nix, He’s eternal in Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God, or was that on, so I say Yes ma’am, but He’s still dead —that’s when she told me to leave the classroom so I did but after class I came back to her all alone behind her desk, her face buried in her hands, practically her whole head, to make her feel better and said Ma’am, when I was out in the hallway I saw Jesus, which got her attention as if she’d seen the man Himself and said Praise God,…
By Dave Oei Rachel Howzell Hall is entering brand new territory with her latest novel. After writing a book series featuring Detective Elouise Norton and ten other standalone crime and mystery novels, the two-time Los Angeles Times Book Award winner has published her first foray into the genre of romantasy with her new novel, The Last One. It features Kai, a sharp, strong, beautiful woman who discovers her clothes are missing, and worse, she has no memory of who she is or why she’s in the middle of a forest. The world is in the midst of drought and a…
My fingers are filthy. Blackened at the tips with grime underneath my fingernails. I should wash my hands, but I have more to do. I look up at the fluorescent glowing numbers on my dusty cable box. The figures are blurry at first, forming an indecipherable shape. I squeeze my eyes shut and reopen them. I imagine my corneas, dry and neglected, dust forming pockets of blindness in the corners of my lids. Fuck. It is 3:42 AM. I want to stop looking, but I can’t. I know that goddamn necklace is somewhere, and I’ll never sleep if I can’t…
Matthew Moore is a playwright originally from New England currently living in D.C. His work has appeared at the Boston Theater Marathon, the Toronto Fringe Festival, Durango Arts, Two Oceans Theater, and the Chain Theater.
Jessup used to think thieves were the scum of the earth. Scab-picking sleazeballs just a mote better than serial killers, pedophiles, and rapists. But what had happened lately at the Quick Fill? It made him reckon that so-called artists were the true creeping brutes, ranking only a quarter-step above the Devil. Hell, maybe even tied with Big Red himself. The kid was bone-thin and filthy, his pockets jammed full of pilfered junk, his arms full of those gold bars they all tried to steal. Jesus God almighty, it was too hot for this. The AC was blasting inside the mart,…
my wife hangs winter clothing in the closet I ask myself if I am ever going to put them on again or should I say goodbye to the seasons of the year, to the parka, to the woolen sweater forever? those clothes remember the war, they’ve absorbed its horror like hair absorbs the smell of cigarettes. they’ll never forget. the destroyed world is irreversible. (translated by Sergey Gerasimov from Russian) Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, Plume, The London Magazine, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades…
At the end of a book tour, rosy thoughts don’t come naturally. You’re alternating between an audience of ten or one hundred, a sense of giddiness and futility. You’ve searched for your novel in airport bookstores, handled reader questions about your use of the wrong car model, introduced yourself to people you’ve met before. You’d ideally be placed in suspended animation for the first six months to avoid wondering about sales, or to prevent futilely searching for your name on one list or another, trying to reinflate your ego for another event. You love your books but you’re sick of…
He’s special, this one. I never would’ve taken him home if he weren’t. And it’s not like it’s our first date. I’ve done this before. I’ll do it again. Unless he’s the one. Whether he is or not, he’s the one right now. What’s that he says? My belt? I picked it up at a thrift store. I tell him that. He says he likes it anyway. More, in fact. There’s a mystery about it, having belonged to someone else. I smile. I watch his fingers as he unbuckles the belt. He peels the pants off my legs. I laugh.…
i jabbed the straw down deeper and down into the mint and ice shavings the only ice i want to see none on the page and so hats off to that pants too sarong salutes and i did so carefully i thought who are these ice writers these canadians and their hard luck stories hard rock and but the lakes are nice and cry me twice rivers so stark and has beens like i hate skating and sad streaming winter tears on pages and ice spines the leftovers of salmon and trout so freshwater tears i need salt salt shaker…
Sydney Strange has been writing and directing since she was in middle school, her passion for storytelling and film driving her throughout the past decade to make numerous short films, pilots, and more. With a strong focus on how people love and feel, Sydney focuses on trying to tell relatable, emotional driven stories that can represent everyone.
Shalini Singh has been published in Oberon Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, SUSPECT, Hobart and Hayden’s Ferry Review among others. The daughter of a mathematics teacher and an ex-lawyer herself, she is a final year MFA CWE candidate at Iowa State University where she binge feels, binge reads and binge watches stuff while grounding herself in meditative research.
Just as I was about to close my therapy office for the day, a mysterious figure arrived at my door. I could only make out his silhouette, for a brilliant aura radiated from him. From some unseen vantage, angels trumpeted his arrival, their heavenly fanfare rendering me mute. Hark and behold! Before me stood Jesus Christ, Son of Man. When my eyes adjusted to Christ’s aura, I realized He was not attired in His iconic messianic garb. Instead of immaculate white robes, He sported a gray sweatsuit that bore a rich tapestry of stains: mustard, red wine, and Cheeto dust.…
The Compton Creek is the Los Angeles River’s southernmost tributary, the only one that starts in the inner city. Its headwaters come from the street storm drains of South Central Los Angeles. Other LA River tributaries like the Tujunga Wash, Arroyo Seco, Rio Hondo, Pacoima Wash and the Burbank Western Wash flow downstream from the northern foothills of either the San Gabriel or the San Fernando Valley. The Compton Creek is more anonymous, much less known than the Arroyo Seco which runs next to the 110 freeway or the Burbank Western Wash which flows past movie studios. Whereas the concretized…
[1] Bulk of the stuff underfoot Becoming the bulk of you Stuffed with its rolled green rug Churning that which turned sun into sugar A patch of clover I sat sifting through Sucking dandelion milk from its stem Milk so named for its rare opacity Bleeding from my woven crown Yellow and delicious. [2] I was reading Leaves of Grass In the shadow of some beige thing In the lawn of some desert corporation To await her exposed interior The unscrewing of her organ’s gasket The agriculturalist’s hand plunging gloved Into her process pouch, deflated Beneath the surrounding flank They…
LIGHTS UP. A small, bland waiting room. Used furniture. Old magazines. Bad carpet. Weird paintings. Plastic plants. Muted Muzak. A middle-aged lady, Claire, sits looking a bit shocked and confused. There’s a knock at the door and a young man enters. It’s Steve. He looks like a Jehovah’s Witness with a clipboard, pen and white walkie-talkie clipped to his belt. He’s not a Jehovah’s Witness. STEVE: Hi. I’m Steve. Claire looks at him. Steve reads from his clipboard. STEVE: Claire Gifford. 226 Willow Crest Lane, Hammond, Missouri? CLAIRE: Yeah. Uh—I’m sorry. I was— STEVE:(at the clipboard) It’s okay. You’re dead.…
Peter Sands was first commissioned by the BBC in London for his original screenplay The Spiral. He wrote Undertow and Visions In The Fire and wrote and directed the Academy Awards® qualifying short, Blacktop Afternoon. Peter’s writing credits include SyFy’s The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne, Girl On A Train, The Other Day and most recently the story for Take My Heart which he also produced. It received the Emmy® Nomination for Outstanding Daytime Fiction Program. He is a Member of the Playwright Directors Unit at The Actors Studio, New York. Current Projects: NOSTRADAMUS & THE KING
One Whiskey Jag West of Amboy, two long snakes of rail stretch, coal-black, into horizon. A dusty, dead moth of a caboose, buckled over iron ore wheels. Warped, greyed— a wheeze of boards. One splintered eyebrow. One cataract eye. Your palm flattened, reaching before I can breathe the word burn, sizzling I leave you standing, fused, your wind-chapped lips cracked to O. Dacia J. Harrold is a queer psychoanalyst living in Arizona where she recently completed an MFA in poetry at Northern Arizona University. She enjoys spending time outdoors and reading and writing fiction and poetry. She tries to write…
Bless the rubber band that holds night around the horizon. Bless the dry rot creeping through its tension. Bless its breaking. Bless the way the light spills out like shiny pennies from a roll. Bless the bank of days where I make my withdrawals, bless my balance in the black, bless the credit of my soul. Bless the stash of candy tellers kept by the counter at Yadkin State Bank. Bless pneumatic tubes that gifted us deposit slips and suckers. Bless you, Doris, favorite teller, always good for double suckers. Bless the Doris who will close my overdrawn account. May…
I don’t know when the decision-makers brought in two trailers and divided them in half to make four classrooms. They were like that when I arrived. Slapped between the main building and the ball fields, the big playground constantly beckoned to us. The bank of windows on the other side of the classroom faced the cafeteria. Isolated and tucked away from the watchful ears and eyes of the headmaster and administration at East School in New Canaan, Connecticut, some of the kids exiled to the cheap little trailers frequently misbehaved. If they chose the sixth graders for those temporary classrooms…
Cayla didn’t want her boyfriend telling anyone about their mistake. Not ever. She didn’t even want to believe their mistake was real. That’s why she was up again peeing on sticks while the entire world was sleep. Her pee dripped from her body to the stick. Squeezing the stick tight, she prayed it would prove the others wrong. Hope, horror, and impatience climbed up her legs. The two pink lines grew, her hands shaking. Maybe she should pee on another. Maybe she should accept this pregnancy as her new reality. She wrapped each stick in three folds of toilet paper…