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THE OLD WOMEN AND THE SEA by Kate Faigen

December 12, 2024

Sybil unsticks her thigh from the side of the banana boat. She’s been lost at sea with Celeste for sixty-one days now. Sixty-one salty-aired days of morning dips and back floats at sunset. Stolen sandwiches dropped by seagulls into their laps, lunches and dinners enjoyed over chats about everything and nothing. Don’t feel badly for Sybil and Celeste—the old women are coasting. In the sun, they spread their arms and tan their skin, speaking like sailors. They laugh so loud and deep they make waves. At nighttime, Sybil and Celeste lie down and hug the banana boat—Cary Grant, they call

THE QUIET SHORE by Belinda Rowe

December 11, 2024

Everything has an end — even stars, but still, when I caressed your face that morning, my fingers panicked at the cold of you. Steadfast for thirty years. Every Friday night we dined at our favourite restaurant, ordered spaghetti aglio e olio and a glass of Chablis. You sat opposite the fish tank where the blue groper circled, I sat overlooking the ocean. Remember you whispered, that’s no life. I didn’t think I could go on; cloven heart, heft of silence, but I kept up Friday nights for as long as it took, sat opposite the fish tank, declined the

RUN by Karen Kao

December 10, 2024

Back then, the law center sat in a squat square flanked on one side by a free needle exchange and on the other by a flophouse that rented its rooms by the hour. I was late to class. I think it was Civil Procedure. One hundred pairs of eyes calculated my chances of failing as I took the only seat available in the first row next to her. She had red hair and green eyes and the kind of adorable tipped-up nose that I have always wanted to have. She came from a working class Irish Catholic family with priests

BEACH LAND by Lucas Flatt

December 9, 2024

Bushels of sargassum had washed up among the rental chairs. They clogged the beach. And so, fittingly, the day began with disappointment. Marjorie hated it, done up in strawberry print and pale as the moon with sunblock on her little face, thick like cream cheese. She scooped and hurled the stuff away from the chairs, scowling, haranguing the clods of seaweed. Gracie, implacable behind her sunglasses, rummaging through something on her phone, wouldn’t look Paul in the face. Paul toed the pile before his chair. “It’s got berries. We’ll make wine out of it.” Gracie frowned. “I have our tagline:

POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE OF REPLACING YOUR EYEBALLS WITH CORN ON THE COB by Tyler Plofker

December 8, 2024

Me and Johnny replaced our eyeballs with corn on the cob. One cob stickin’ out of each socket. Buttered. Went in easy. Johnny’s aunt, Joann, said, “Stop that, you boys need your eyes!” We said, “Shut your trap, ya old hag!” We ran into the backyard. Could see just fine. The cobs fell into our skulls and bumped around as we climbed into Johnny’s treehouse. He dared me to dare him to jump from the treehouse to the grass, which was uncharacteristic. I dared him to jump from the treehouse to the grass. Johnny jumped from the treehouse to the

LADIES OF THE PRIVY CHAMBER by Mark Iosifescu

December 5, 2024

“There was a russet-coloured moon of ominous size too low above the whispering bushes; he danced exuberantly for five minutes beneath it after the click when his neck broke. His bowels opened. What a mess!” —Angela Carter, “Elegy for a Freelance” It was on the basis of his sorry reputation that we arranged for Puccio the ex-valet to desecrate the chapel. When we first arrived in town, we were told by villagers of every description—the lordlings and plainclothesmen, the monastics and innkeepers, the stewards and eelbaiters and whores—that he was a timid man and a coward. Puccio was, they

WHAT I REALLY MEAN WHEN I SAY I’VE BEEN DOOMSCROLLING by Benjamin Ray Allee

December 4, 2024

We presumed the forbidden knowledge would be some eldritch thing. The death-in-thought, a word for God. A space at the universal end we could not reach. An unthinkable color. A demon in our brother. Horror of all horrors, it is none of these. The secret that obliterates the mind, the antidivinity, it is not great, it is not God, it is not ultimate. Instead, swiping up the cosmic edge, I find: A momma making breakfast. Using more eggs than I would’ve thought, apron on, divulging drama from the clothing store and I do not want to know— An athlete dancing.

KEVIN CHESSER HAS A HEADACHE: AN INTERVIEW WITH A POET WHILE WATCHING AN ORIOLES GAME by Dalton Monk

December 3, 2024

Kevin Chesser lives above a candy shop in Thomas, West Virginia, which is a historical coal mining and railroad town with a population of less than six-hundred people. I met Kevin almost a year ago when he came to Huntington to read from his poetry collection, Relief of My Symptoms, at a reading series I host called Ham’s House. Kevin read his poems, played the banjo, and made people laugh. I’ve thought of him often since the reading, and so have others who were in the crowd—they’ve asked me about him. He has that effect on people. He makes them

3 MICRO PIECES by Amy DeBellis

December 2, 2024

Yakutsk Temperature dropping like a dive off a cliff. My lungs full of winter air, clear and sharp as ice. After the airplane and its stale box of other people’s exhalations, each breath is like mainlining oxygen. When I rub my lips together their skin is as dry as the snow beneath my boots. The salt of this morning still furs my tongue. My hands tremble brittle in my coat pockets, and my fingers rub the edge of a ticket, a mint, an obsolete coin. In only a few moments I will put my memories behind me and walk into

LOST HAM OF VIRGINIA by Joseph Young

November 29, 2024

That’s a dog, he said, thumbing a pink eyebrow. No, she answered, that’s a bear. Muzzle’s too long. That’s how they come around here. The creature climbed the far hill, cleaving the dew grass in two halves. It got to the door and pushed in, a clattering of end tables. Bears don’t act that way, he said. Dogs who act that way get taken off. He grabbed her by a hip, turned her around. Her nose was burnt so he kissed it. Like aloe jelly, she said. She pressed his dimple. Bzzt, she said. The bear or dog came out