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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

EVIL, EVIL, EVIL: CHRIS KELSO’S ‘THE DREGS TRILOGY’ by Matthew Kinlin

November 26, 2024

“They say you can hide from Blackcap if you burn all your dreams.” – Alfie McPherson, Ritual America Chris Kelso’s The Dregs Trilogy (Black Shuck Books, 2020) is a triptych of novellas: Shrapnel Apartments, Unger House Radicals, Ritual America; where each part deepens and troubles its sibling. The book moves backwards and forwards through time and space, from the Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo to a backwoods area near Winnipeg, to Louisiana and a number of other locations; some terrestrial, others interdimensional. Kelso’s trilogy revolves around a series of ritualistic killings. These murders appear to contain

ZOO DRINKING IN AMERICA by Avee Chaudhuri

November 25, 2024

Dutta placed a map of the zoo on the wall and reviewed the group’s itinerary. First they would shotgun beers in the parking lot, then visit the reptile house. There, they would shoot rum (hip flask left pocket) and handle the sloughed snake skin on display very delicately so everyone else would think they were respectable patrons of the Lincoln Children’s Zoo. Next they would watch the giant apes and pull bourbon (right pocket). It was rumored that the lowland gorillas were in a lustful and shameless mood of late. At this point they would purchase concessions to reduce the

DEAR PHONE MAN by Karris Rae

November 22, 2024

Hello. I am Roy Whitaker. I have mailed you before, or maybe not you but someone else at your office, because my phone has been disconnected. I think this is because you think I am dead, but I am not dead, so I would like you to please reconnect my phone. I am waiting on a call from my daughter and if I have no phone I will never get it. And I would shimmy up that pole and see if I could reattach it myself only I am pretty old anymore and I do not have a little neighbor