A Senile Lucifer by Forrest Roth
I am spoken by having. I am kept by saying. I am laughing. A thing less by one witness, no longer keeping my company. Who has moved on far from without, without a cause to take with. I keep the thing. I wit the thingness, as in now, should one take offense to my laughing... Read More
Paris by Laurie Stone
We did not communicate again. Now he is the age I was when we met, and I am the age Gardner was when he died. Sometimes it comes into my thoughts that I will die this year, too. There is something we feel we are supposed to give back, like feeding a body to the... Read More
A Missing Suspiria de Profundis by Matt Schumacher
DEAR ______________, I hereby bequeath you the most frustrating case of my career, the baffling phantom, absurd goblin, and born wanderer of alleyways known as Thomas De Quincey. This De Quincey, famously laudanum-laced poet, is almost impossible to track, a slithering enigma, whose escape routes multiply everywhere he turns... Read More
The Cliff’s Edge by Evan Lavender-Smith
That she will fall from the cliff’s edge. That her son’s sweaty hand will slip from her grasp and her son will fall from the cliff’s edge. That her outstretched fingers will fail to catch onto her daughter’s onesie as her daughter waddles out past the cliff’s edge. That her flabby biceps won’t support her... Read More
An Archaeology of Holes by Stacy Hardy
A hole has so many enemies. I watch the weather closely, every pattern, every warning. Rain forms and drops. The soil is sodden and slippery. At night the wind blows. I fear avalanches... Read More
The Event Still to Come by David Peak
Transposition: A series of cavernous, empty spaces at the end of a winding road. Floor-to-ceiling windows. Walls covered with portraiture: families, children, hands and feet. Wood paneling. Molded ceilings. Various arrangements of tarnished silver. Significant water damage. Black mold. A staircase that leads nowhere... Read More
Don’t Let This Happen to You by Harry Leeds
The funeral is over and they’ve almost finished stuffing their craws with water, smoked fish, that good, black bread so cheap but these days rare. Jowls filled with water, bubbling to show off the prowess developed over decades, into middle age, of making unpleasant shapes and noises with their faces... Read More
Dalalæða by Iris Moulton
I have a houseplant. His name is Thor. I wanted to spell it the Icelandic way—Þór—with that impossible little thorn, that jaunty laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative, but my boyfriend said it was too pretentious. He said medievalists have no business naming things, that we should make nothing new... Read More
Mundane Cruelty by Paul Kavanagh
The secret is rhizomatic. The secret is a patch of mushrooms awakening in a quagmire. The secret is a corolla which is opening up to the sun and whose dust is filling the air causing: 1. A runny nose. 2. Swelling under the eyes and tears. 3. A puce taint to the face... Read More
Crosstown by Donald Breckenridge
He regarded the image of mother, father and son sitting around an oval table. She stated that the boy’s biological mother lived in southern Ohio. Three unguarded smiles projected the appearance of a happily sunburned family vacationing somewhere near the equator. Mark handed the phone back with a flattering observation about Catherine’s youthful beauty... Read More