By December, four girls are pregnant. Some believe it to be the pay phone on the third floor, but most people assume it’s the glazing kiln in the art room.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Whatever Is the Matter
By Kenzie Allen
How I regret not opening my mouth, the down-lit cast of my glance where I studied that quality, sun-runner, gold bodied.
DON’T MISS
We’re seeking works from new and emerging poets as well as from established ones. All entries are considered for publication.
Please see the Guidelines.
OPEN TO ALL WRITERS
We’re looking for short stories, essays, memoirs, photo essays, graphic stories, and excerpts from long fiction and nonfiction.
“If you want to be a geologist, be a geologist.” I’d like to think he said it at someone’s graduation, a place where the road forks, where journeys begin.
PHOTOGRAPHY & ART
POETRY
POETRY
PHOTOGRAPHY & ART
Exposure
By Curt Richter
Out of the many Southern writers whom Richter photographed across the past two decades, we’ve chosen twenty-five who have awed and inspired us.
POETRY
Requiem
By Michelle Bitting
Isn’t it nice to think tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes yet? The stains on your skin, really wounds rubbed clean, rolled in clover.
POETRY
Conversations with Death
By Danielle Blau
I bit my tongue Don’t forgetYour umbrella. At
The fair.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Two Girls Bathing and Other Poems
By Ama Codjoe
Carol points to a spot on my back. I resist the urge to hide my breasts. She wears her nakedness like it has been woven from air.
POETRY
Praying Naked and Other Poems
By Katie Condon
It wasn’t guilt I felt. Maybe it was loneliness. Maybe it was my own desire to be desired, since, if a man wants me, I know I have at least a little worth left.
POETRY
Emo, 2005
By William Fargason
Here we were, seventeen, more pissed than we knew what to do with, lost in the sweat of the crowd and the noise of the music, thankful for the distortion.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
The Visiting Room
By Caits Meissner
We shuffle through the metal detector as one dumb animal. We spread. Kneel. We’ll come out missing parts.
POETRY
The Land of Five Rivers
By Faisal Mohyuddin
In Urdu, the clock tower is called Ghanta Ghar, meaning Hour House, which sounds just like our house. However, nothing of it is ours.
POETRY
Ruth Stone Explains the Book of the Dead to Sylvia Plath
By Christian Teresi
I did what I could to hush the knot and rope, the truth of gravity. There are not enough idiomatic expressions to converse flawlessly with the dead.
POETRY
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
iPOEMS
POETRY
On Seeing Damien Hirst’s “Kingdom of the Father”
By Laura Wetherington
The butterflies hang grotesque: House paint obscures the edges, black paint licking down their iridescent fur.
NARRATIVE OUTLOUD
Two Poems
By Ocean Vuong
Ocean, don’t be afraid. The end of the road is so far ahead it is already behind us. Don’t worry. Your father is only your father until one of you forgets.
iPOEMS
In Defense of Ballin’ on a Budget
By Marcus Wicker
Damn, Will—they’ve got you sounding mighty Uncle Phil in these streets. Like the still calling the Ketel One cheap.
FEATURES
FICTION
NONFICTION
FEATURES
Robert Stone and Kate Chopin
Stone’s Adaptation of The Awakening
We went in search of the missing pages from Children of Light and found them in an archive of Stone’s papers.
FICTION
Gethsemani
By Austin Smith
No one in town would take him for a Trappist monk with vows of chastity, just as, in the abbey, no one took him for a lapsed bohemian who played jazz records and danced naked.
NONFICTION
Christian Soldiers
By Hal Crowther
A tough cookie, this warrior-priest, who talked about his eleven-plus years in prisons the way scholars talk about graduate school.
CARTOONS
CARTOONS
Saving Planet Earth
By Bill Barich
Our subscribers tended to be fervent activists, hardcore eco-warriors in the mode of Edward Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang, or delicate souls who ate no meat.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2017-05
By Various Artists
New art and humor from Curtis Edwards, Rina Piccolo, Julia Suits, P. C. Vey, and Kim Warp.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2017-04
By Various Artists
Great new toons by Pat Byrnes, J. C. Duffy, Farley Katz, Amy Kurzweil, and Mary Lawton.
