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Fiction Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Cloudbursts by Scott Dorsch Fiction Volume 16.2 On The Other Side of the Wall by Andrea Bianchi Fiction Volume 16.2 In Eternal by Lauren O’Donoghue Fiction Volume 16.1 Message In a Romance Novel by Anuradha Kumar Fiction Volume 16.1
Poetry_V16-1
Poetry Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Girlhood Sonnet by Sophia Ivey Poem Volume 16.2 when i say my father is homesless, i mean: by Harley Chapmen Poem Volume 16.2 Gub Dog by Addy Gravatte Poem Volume 16.2 Šljivovica by Celeste Colarič-Gonzales Poem Volume 16.2 Heart by Theo LeGro Poem Volume 16.2 The More We Go The More We Don’t Know a Thing by Briel Felton Poem Volume 16.1 Away We Go by Claire Wahmanholm Poem Volume 16.1 Dew on the Sea by Claire Wahmanholm Poem Volume 16.1 The Cabinda Spouses by Landa Wo Poem Volume 16.1 And After, No One Lowered Their Flag by Matthew Williams Poem Volume 16.1 Afterbirth (fiction) by Rachel Stempel Poem Volume 16.1 Biological Speculation by Briel Felton Poem Volume 16.1 I Licked a Leaf by Ron Antonucci Poem Volume 16.1 i bleed for the first time on a toilet in Versailles by Sirka Elspass (translated by Anne-Sophie Balzer) Poem Volume 16.1 Nothing is more sad than a waning moon by Sirka Elspass (translated by Anne-Sophie Balzer) Poem Volume 16.1 I have two DNAs one belongs to my old by Roman Iorga Poem Volume 16.1
Nonfiction_V16-1
Nonfiction Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Carrying Instructions by jane putnam perry Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 I Waited For My Turn and it Almost Killed Me by Maureen Pendras Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 Take Care by Nicole Morris Non-Fiction Volume 16.2 Something So Simple by Wendy Fontaine Non-Fiction Volume 16.1 Yellowfin by Abby McCord Non-Fiction Volume 16.1 Fears, Explained by Kayla Jessop Non-Fiction Volume 16.1
Yellowfin
Nonfiction Home Art by Alice Stone-Collins Yellowfin by Abby McCord There’s a delicate painting of koi fish on the porcelain bottle my mom pours her sake from. My dad and brother are discussing politics, their voices muffled over the music. We are sitting in a Japanese restaurant; the light is dim but illuminates each table and our faces in a soft, warm glow. Various staff rush behind me with boards of fresh sushi and steaming bowls of chili garlic noodles. Our waitress emerges from the chef hats and smokey pans as she brings out our food: ginger salad, miso soup, vegetable tempura, and rolls of sushi we share. On the plate sits a decadent Philadelphia roll with salmon roe and a dynamite maki roll with yellowfin tuna. The yellowfin is red like a pomegranate—slightly pink but rich and deep. I reach for a piece with my chopsticks and devour its bright taste as if it came straight from the salty waters. Yellowfin tuna typically reside in the epipelagic zone, the surface layer of the ocean that mixes with waves, wind, and raw heat from the sun as if it were freckled. At its base is the thermocline, the zone where temperature drastically drops and descends into deep, indigo water—the hidden, pale skin of the ocean. Yellowfin are strong schoolers; they swim in a strange synchronized fashion as if they are an intricate ballet following an unseen director. The restaurant is full for a Sunday night. I wonder why all these people are here and if it’s for the same reason as us—a distraction from the holiday break’s inevitable end or to soak up the moments with our loved ones before splitting across the country to different homes. To the right of us are two men in their twenties. They drink beer and wear hats and hunch their gym-addicted shoulders to watch a game of soccer on their phones. They don’t look at each other but are still together in their own way. I can tell they think the waitress is pretty by the way their eyes soften when she walks by. To the left of us is another family; the parents sit closely while their adolescent daughter is across from them. Her glasses sit lopsided as she rests her chin in her hand and impassively pokes the table with a chopstick. I wonder what brings her melancholic expression, if she’s experiencing the confusion of being a teenager or maybe missing an older sibling who couldn’t come home for the holiday. I wonder if she’s navigating the dark water for the first time. Directly behind our table is a wooden wall that splits the restaurant into two sections. It’s some type of glossy oak also illuminated in a soft glow. A long, stringy plant sits on top, its vines daintily traveling down the polished wood. Somewhere in a gap of the plant’s speckled leaves, I spot another version of me across the restaurant. She is 18 years old, sitting on the edge of a booth, shoved beside her boyfriend at the time and his friends she doesn’t know. Six years ago, on homecoming night, dressed in heels and hairspray and uncertainty, sitting in a Japanese restaurant. As if a wave drags me under its current, I am thrust over the oak wall to be by her. I swim and tumble into her energy as the temperature drops and my vision blurs in shades of indigo. She is navigating the dark water. I watch her closely, remembering her mind and the way it works. Her dress hugs her stomach in ways she doesn’t like, but she wonders if a subtle suggestion to what was underneath would impress him. She crosses her arms in her lap and smiles as he laughs with his body turned away from her. She desperately wants to hide her pale skin, although she cannot hide her freckling shoulders from coming to the surface. I know her contentment is only a fragile shell she inhabits. She knows somewhere deep within her there is me, a version of her that knows what it’s like to swim in the sun-kissed waters. She doesn’t know I am standing beside her, that I have always been with her, even in the dark water. I want to scream I am here I am here I am here. She sits small with her shoulders low and razor-nicked legs crossed as if the space will burst if she takes up too much of it. She picks at her fried rice with her fork, stirring the steam until there is none left. Her gaze finds the interlaced fingers of the couple next to her as she notices the empty space in between her own. When I reach for her, another wave thrusts me under its current, and I am being pulled over the oak wall again. I desperately claw and cry to her so I can tell her all the things she needs to hear: you do not need to fear being alone or taking up space or wandering into uncertainty. Somewhere, somehow, I am with you, and I know all the beauty and pain and heartbreak and love you have yet to feel. Trust me—let your world crack and burst and you will finally see how tenderly sunlight dances upon your skin. Her innocent, uncertain eyes only catch a glimpse of me. But I know, in this one millisecond transcending across years, she hears me. Breathless and drenched in an enigmatic feeling, I am placed back into my seat; warm, gentle water swirls around me. There are still discussions of politics and sake to be sipped. Our rolls of brightly colored sushi have diminished to clumps of sticky rice and chopstick-poked wasabi. The yellowfin has been eaten. I look through the gap in the leaves but only see an empty table. In this fleeting moment—where the four of us sit under a
Afterbirth (fiction)
Afterbirth (fiction) by Rachel Stempel Today’s horoscope told me it’s okay to lie.It’s not that I need permission but I need something. (Apparently this is self-sabotage. Or, at least, the reek of desperation.) Last night the way the hallway backlit her bedhead turned me—I don’t want to hurt you, really, but I don’t care if I do. (If you think you’re using me it won’t be that bad.) Sometimes God speaks to me through the Telehealth waiting room and the electric hum of computer silence is hymnal. Sometimes God speaks to me through the Telehealth waiting room and the message is swallowed with one-hundred silver bullets. I may’ve stolen the blueprint for my inner world but now it’s as mine as anyone’s: desert oasis, never enough money, every permutation of man. And all sound delivered through an unplugged box TV while someone who is not me (honorific) watches the longest baseball game of all time. (Someone who is not me is: a fire escape; the last yellow raincoat in Moscow; a pocket watch that fits so well in the mouth it settles into the palate—diagnostically speaking, a torus palatinus: still too much but at least hidden.) I am learning how wrong I am about everything and this is not how I wanted my year to start. It was only last month I finished taxonomizing the past year’s guilt so it looked like I’d some to show. (I’d gotten work-high in the spreadsheets and thought I must be getting better.) Tucked away in grooves (first, of your arms; then, of your chest), tonight I will sleep to be rutted the same. I do my best work before bird-dawn. My sex is goal-oriented but the best sex is a bad sentence: bleating and in need of a tourniquet. Naked, before a range of immutables can interrupt. The bouquet vending machine replaces your phonetics. We recite sound, slaughter—my shirt smells like it, like blood. I try to sound what out through cryptic fingerings on an invisible clarinet. You misread the notes. It’s natural to do so. Tell me something. Anything. I’m an excavator of meaning even in the smallest sample. Stop. I’ve no frame of reference for abundance. I’m so something, it’s impossible. (Or, at least, the reek of desperation.) Poetry Home Art by Keegan Baatz
Landa wo
Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Landa wo Landa wo is a poet from Cabinda, Angola, and France whose work has most recently appeared in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Black Warrior Review online, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, Raleigh Review, Salt Hill, Scrivener Creative Review, The Common, and other journals and anthologies. Landa wo is politically engaged, and his work deals with prominent issues of social justice, discrimination, and cultural strife. Twitter: @wo_landa Instagram: @landa.wo The Cabinda spouses
Romana Iorga
Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Romana Iorga Romana Iorga is the author of Temporary Skin (Glass Lyre Press, 2024) and a woman made entirely of air (Dancing Girl Press, 2024). Her poems have appeared in various journals, including New England Review, Lake Effect, and The Nation, as well as on her poetry blog at clayandbranches.com. Website: clayandbranches.com Instagram: @romanaiorga i have two DNAs one belongs to my old
Abby McCord
Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Abby McCord Abby McCord earned her bachelor’s degree in English/creative writing in 2022 and is now a full-time writer based in St. Louis. Her work has been published in Atticus Review. When she’s not writing, Abby can be found tending to her many plants and enjoying the company of her two pets. Yellowfin
Wendy Fontaine
Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Wendy Fontaine Wendy Fontaine’s work has appeared in dozens of literary journals and magazines including Pithead Chapel, Hippocampus Magazine, Longridge Review, Sweet Lit and Under the Sun, as well as Creative Nonfiction‘s Sunday Short Reads. She’s received nonfiction prizes from Hunger Mountain Review and TIFERET Journal and nominations to the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthologies. A native New Englander, she lives in southern California. Something So Simple
Lauren ODonoghue
Menu Current Volume Archive About Us Submit Categories Lauren O’Donoghue Lauren O’Donoghue is a writer, game designer and PhD researcher based in Yorkshire. Her short fiction has been featured in Mslexia, Northern Gravy, Horror Library, Volume 8, ergot, Atlas & Alice, and Planet Scumm. She is a writer for a US-based text game developer, a Curtis Brown Creative Breakthrough candidate, and a freelance arts workshop facilitator. Website Link: laurenodonoghue.itch.io Twitter/X: @LHODonoghue In Eternal