In the glass he saw his round, sad face and narrow beard, his sloping shoulders and wrinkled corduroy lapels; for the King of Broadway, he thought, you still look like a failure.
Winter Issue
FICTION
FICTION
FICTION
Winter Issue
FICTION
Bioko
By Bill Barich
Of course we drank too much during the crisis. The country was in shreds, tearing itself apart at the seams. Clubs, machetes, widespread rioting, then rumors of a civil war.
FICTION
Telepathic Message in Time of Crisis
By Ann Beattie
He considers my writing interchangeable with other coronavirus activities, such as staring at your bank balance while sucking the ends of your hair.
FICTION
Vera
By Carol Edgarian
I would never believe that a man or a wish could save us. Having come from desire, I knew too much about desire. I knew San Francisco was a whore’s daughter, same as me.
FICTION
FICTION
NARRATIVE 10
FICTION
The Crossing Guard
By Sara Houghteling
He stops and frowns. “You going to be okay out here? I mean, a woman, by herself, in the dark?”
This hasn’t made it on to my list of worries.
FICTION
oh
By Lance Olsen
Before stepping out, Doctor Dressler left a note on the kitchen countertop, black marker on yellow lined paper: Suicide. Back by 7:00. Love, Max.
NARRATIVE 10
Ten Questions
for Paisley Rekdal
I wish I could return to my early twenties when I was suffering from insomnia and, to while away the nights, turned to nineteenth-century novels.
NONFICTION
CLASSICS
GRAPHIC STORIES
NONFICTION
Beachfront
By J. D. Debris
This beach is the perfect place to sip iced coffee, strum major-seventh chords, or meditate on the complete and utter destruction of humanity.
CLASSICS
The Masque of the Red Death
By Edgar Allan Poe
With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself.
GRAPHIC STORIES
Signaling
By Jenny Lesser
I walked around with a beat-up copy of Kafka’s stories. I thought it had a knife or candle on the cover but now realize it was a pen nib.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Bedtime Stories
By Yasmine Ameli
My mama and her cousins ride bikes to the Caspian in their bikinis. The oil is good, the rial strong. When bearded men yell at the girls, they just laugh.
POETRY
The Goodbyes
By John Balaban
Say their names all you want, you are calling after ghosts: Dead parents, good or bad, dwelling in terminal silence.
POETRY
Real Trees Are a Different Matter
By Emma Binder
Canadian geese stand agog at real trees, real lake, wondering at the call of exodus unmooring webbed feet.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
The Idea of Antarctica
By Kōan Anne Brink
When the islands dry up, there is no telling a difference, there will be no needing to tell a difference. Silk cloud, silk veil of rock unfolding.
POETRY
Nothing (Elegy for My Father)
By Patrick Thomas Casey
Nothing stills, nothing stops. The world is still as it was before. The gulls still cry their nothing sounds; the sea still toils as nothing drowns.
POETRY
Not an Elegy
By Patrick James Errington
Thank fuck there’s still a little weather left. Snow, which means you don’t have to talk about it, means despite itself, no poems needed.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Divine Apparitions
By Rebecca Foust
In a tree’s convulsed burl, I saw the pope who blessed Mother T’s covert deathbed conversions but forbade condoms for men who had AIDS.
POETRY
Yet and Other Poems
By April Goldman
He said laughing, it is brave of you to try to use the word beautiful, really kind of wild.
POETRY
Ground Squirrels
By J. P. Grasser
Their rebirth was almost more joyous to see, better than before—praise this ever-loving life, I thought, that goes on despite our efforts to the contrary.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Elegy for Suzanne Nash Gurin
By Katy Gurin
Every time I think I know the horror of it exactly, Iʼm wrong. For mourning they say three months, two months, a year.
POETRY
Doorknob Comments
By Jessica Hincapie
Suddenly it seemed so silly. Demanding love from even a mother; expecting that poetry, of all things, ought to tell the truth.
POETRY
Gamble
By Kassy Lee
Why my grandma loved penny slots and romance novels with unicorns mounted by long-haired men, I never knew.
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
Tacenda
By Nadra Mabrouk
My own skin now still hardening in February. His name remains, always relevant, debris in the lake where I stand on the edge.
POETRY
Gifts for a Beautiful Body and Other Poems
By Komal Mathew
Who am I to tell you now what was given to me (by my mother and my mother’s mother)?
POETRY
They Were Blind and Other Poems
By Rooja Mohassessy
Fatwas condoned our arrest for the rouged contours of our lips, not what came out of them
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
The Monkey’s Face and Other Poems
By Max Seifert
One of the guys is always bound to be that guy. You felt the tree you hole up in at night being climbed.
POETRY
Communication
By Soren Stockman
It is part of the deal, the church, the nation I call home, where citizens protesting their own killers are told Go back to Africa.
POETRY
Last Acre
By Lee Colin Thomas
Where the subdivision gives way to what it was once: an open field simmering in the nacreous breath of a summer moon.
iPOEMS
READERS’ NARRATIVES
READERS’ NARRATIVES
iPOEMS
January
By John Freeman
I cooked pasta
with chilies last
night and my
fingers still
burn.
READERS’ NARRATIVES
Thomas Nelson Community College
By Bill Glose
I could follow the lessons of my silent father or try something different. And so I wrote a poem.
READERS’ NARRATIVES
Mumbai
By Beatrice Rao
We learned to be thankful for each sunrise and sunset. The birds chirping at the windowsill, singing no matter what.
SIX-WORD STORIES
CARTOONS
SIX-WORD STORIES
Rembrandt
By Dipen DasGupta
A story about materialism, morality, cupidity, and conflagration—all in just six words.
CARTOONS
Cartoon Art Volume 2021-02
By Various Artists
New laughs from Glen Le Lievre, Jared Nangle, Teresa Burns Parkhurst, Ali Solomon, and P. C. Vey.
Cartoon Art Volume 2021-01
By Various Artists
Great new toons by Kendra Allenby, Pat Byrnes, Ivan Ehlers, Kate Isenberg, and Mick Stevens.