CIAO, TRIESTE by Christine Kwon
The screaming and kissing seem to come straight from the id, from the desire to suck out a man’s soul and leave him a desiccated shell.
LOVE IS A HOT STOVE YOUR HEART KEEPS TOUCHING by Jeanine Skowronski
And so, you are here, you are here, you are waiting, frost-bitten and sun-stroked; you are waiting for a warmth that you think, that you know, that you think that you know now will never come.
OMENS ASIDE, I KENNED IT WOULDN’T LAST by Gabriela Denise Frank
The chugging train slowed, then sighed to a halt over the England-Scotland border, the so-called station a mere strip of platform engulfed in endless verdant meadow dotted with clots of creamy sheep.
LAUGHING PRUDISHLY; A REVIEW OF MARSTON HEFNER’S “HIGH SCHOOL ROMANCE” by Evan Williams
For Hefner, the awkwardness is the point, and he wields its power well.
THE SWAMP PALACE by Jake Lancaster
There’s a boardwalk to the water through the swamp and the swamp is full of white birds on skinny orange legs and there are plastic bags everywhere and Dew bottles and it smells like we’re in a Roman candle fizzing out—that smell, what do you call that?
THE TORTOISE AND HIS PROBLEMS by Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya and Wes Holtermann
Hours spent nude on plinths in those drafty rooms, and only one painting had ever done him justice.
THE PROMENADE EXPRESS by Lauren Baker
On bad days, I fantasized about taking a sledgehammer to the train. I knew where the security cameras were (and weren’t).
ARMS by Xavier Blackwell-Lipkind
Pink light oozes in; just like that, it’s day, and I sigh because nothing bad can happen during the day. It’s a rule, and we don’t break rules.
ENDLESS VIOLENCE AT APlusAtHomeDialysis.com by June Martin
Sunlight glimmered off the van’s undercarriage, rays of white and blue and golden light mingling in beams and flares captured by the helicopter’s dazed camera. The police took potshots at the minivan as it soared past them.
AUTOMATONS 3 by Adam Soldofsky
I want you— I want you so bad