Archives

TOOTH by Joe Johnson

April 30, 2025

The itch begins in the jawbone under the gums. I can’t get to it with a finger or tongue or backscratcher. Have to let it itch, like watching a fly you can’t swat tickle your forearm. It’s happened before. Happens more these days. Nothing shows up on x-rays, and now dental insurance is all used up. The tooth itches as the boss talks. He’s wearing a suit on casual Friday. It’s gray and fits him in the shoulders but not the belly, so he leaves it unbuttoned. The blue striped tie hangs over his belt. It’s like he’s guest-hosting a

BOWLING WITH DRACULA by Justin Gibson

April 28, 2025

The first thing we discovered was that vampires loved contracts. Well, no, sorry, I guess the first thing we discovered was the vampires themselves — that they’re real. We figured it out pretty quick, as pets went missing; as we started to get the heebie-jeebies when twilight flooded our backyards a cool blue; as pale strangers stood outside our windows in the middle of the night and asked if we’d let them in, voices like warm caramel. Very strange stuff for these parts, but very obvious: That’s vampires. But we figured out vampires loved contracts almost right after that. Erik

APPROPRIATE by Andrew P. Heath

April 25, 2025

She said something vague to me. I said something appropriate. She said, What? I said something appropriate. Looking at her. Her collarbone. She said something sarcastic. I said something appropriate. I looked at her collarbone, then slowly looked up at her face. She looked like a cocker spaniel (I did not say that). I had once been very attracted to her. When she would take a shower, I could hear the water running, and I imagined her in there, elegant, graceful, small, her long black hair slicked across her white body. The image was potent and intoxicating, I was drunk

THE COMPULSIVE ON MOTHER EATING by Chel Campbell

April 23, 2025

I have hurt my child by accident, banging his fine-haired head on open car doors or slipping down the stairs, purpling my spent body to shield his from impact. I used to be able to nurse the hurt away, both of us grateful for the easy relief. My inner voice says I am never glad when an accident happens. Another voice says I want to hurt my child on purpose. Those are the days when I am afraid to love my child, as if my love could eat him. My therapist says the past-abused often feel terrified that they or

ALL THE NAMES WE HAVE TO HAVE FOR LOVE by Lei Wang

April 22, 2025

Someone saw some clouds once upon a time. So what? I can see them, too —a haiku But better to have seen them a thousand years ago. I am not being sentimental. I like plumbing as much as anyone, and I know the more pollution, the more brilliant sunsets. But the first poems, you could write about anything. Day turning into night a real phenomenon, a mouth and another mouth. The first poems had no metaphors because nothing was like anything else yet. The kiss was a courting ritual involving, what else, food. A capybara feeding

PARENTHETICAL by J. A Gullickson

April 21, 2025

The floor-to-ceiling windows let in so much light that the office is sweltering. Before the sun emerges from behind the tree line, the HVAC system will turn on. These brisk breaths signal the start of a new day for the company. Graham cycles through the presentation again, sinking deeper into his chair. Each slide features a corporate incantation coldly justifying decisions few care for. Key stakeholders have already made up their minds. This is only a formality. In the center of the cube farm lives Hannah. She stares blankly at the two screens in front of her, cursor gliding back

DO THESE BOOKS MAKE ME LOOK WEIRD?: JACK SKELLEY RECOMMENDS

April 15, 2025

Madison Murray, My Gaping Masshole (Self-published, 2025) A tart is born: Announcing Madison Murray’s fiction, poems, collages. The collection is replete with references to Boston (especially North Shore, Massachusetts). You know, Dunkin Donuts, clam chowdah, the Red Sox Big Green Monstah, Paul Revere, etc. My Gaping Masshole is one unholy, whole, big-ass jam on the concept. Murray’s lewd charm stains every page. My fave parts are Murray’s stories, with real laff-per-paragraph settings, characters, dialog. Of today’s several new writers who are also sex workers (or sex worker-adjacent), Murray is the raunchiest… and funniest. The geo-specificity reminds me of this essential

CRYING FROM THE DUST by Jace Einfeldt

April 14, 2025

A week after my baptism, I hit my little brother in the head with a tee-ball bat and sent my whole family into a frenzy on a Saturday afternoon in mid-March and got locked out of the family car and told to sit on the couch and think about what I did while my younger brother bled all over mom’s brand-new dishtowels in the middle seat of our 1998 emerald-green Yukon Denali. As my family flew down the street on angel’s wings, I contemplated what I had done while picking at the beige, peeling leather couch in the living room

FISHING FOR KAT by Wendy BooydeGraaff

April 11, 2025

He flies into town, late, rents a room in the neighbourhood, meets her first thing in the morning, holds her, remembers how her mother looked, same dark eyes, same dark curl on the top of her head. Every six months, he catches milestones: crawling, walking, first words, kindergarten, high school. Same room, same turquoise couch, same breakfast snacks. Years. Back and forth. He becomes an intermittent constant. At home, he cleans out the extra room, installs a Murphy Bed, hangs her favorite poster. He investigates the local university, uses it as a lure she won’t resist.

JAKOB, I DO! UNTIL I DON’T! by Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch

April 10, 2025

We drank Prosecco on the number 31, escaping the confetti blizzard, the plastic champagne flute cheap between my lips but the ring heavy on my finger, while my parents returned to their hotel and we continued on the early bus—Who gets married at eight in the morning?—and some passengers clucked and said Cheers, but most looked out to the felt-clad streets where stony-faced bankers marched to the rain, then we chugged up a small mountain on a train, and still in my wedding dress with the matching red patent shoes, I whispered footsteps in snow strewn with autumn leaves, and