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POOL RULES by William P Adams

April 1, 2025

The below-ground swimming pool in our neighbor Robbie Garvin’s backyard was ready. Robbie’s father, the beneficiary of a large insurance settlement, wasted no time improving the Garvins' status in the neighborhood. I heard my parents talking about it; they used terms like ‘not above board’ and ‘possible fraud,’ which I knew nothing about. The pool was heated and had a diving board – enough said.Robbie let on at school that he would throw a start-of-summer pool party on the first Saturday after school was out. He bragged that there would be unlimited food and drink and bikini-clad girls from our junior high. I was beyond stoked for the party.Saturday came. The early summer sun was beating down at noon when I arrived at the pool. The only girls were two eight-year-old neighbors splashing in the shallow end. No food in sight, just a six-pack of store-brand soda. Robbie and two pals started a cannonball contest off the diving board, scaring the little girls from the pool. I sat poolside, drinking warm pop. A sign on the shed where Robbie’s dad kept the pool equipment read: WE DON’T SWIM IN YOUR TOILET—PLEASE DON’T PEE IN OUR POOL. I finished the soda and slipped into the shallow end, lazily back-floating with my eyes closed. As Robbie and the others cannonballed into the heated, chlorinated water, I added to the warmth, letting twelve ounces of fizzy cola stream from my young loins, imagining Robbie and his buddies swimming in our toilet.

LAST NIGHT I DREAMT WE WERE LOBSTERS by Melanie Mulrooney

March 13, 2025

Last night I dreamt we were lobsters. I was tucked behind a rock, hiding from the cod swimming overhead. The bright blue of your claw caught my attention; one in two million, deliciously unique.“You’re new here,” I rasped.“Lobsters can’t talk,” you replied.Your antenna twitched in my direction. I crouched in my shadowed crevice, waiting for the light to cease filtering to the ocean floor, for you to come and make me yours.But first, you had to prove yourself—fight your way to dominance.The reigning champion of our rocky oasis charged, his brown-green a stark contrast to your brilliant blue. My antennae twitched at the scent of him. But biology cannot overcome destiny, even for lobsters. I waited—wanting, wishing.You danced him across the ocean floor, kicking rocks with graceful sweeps of your uropods. His crusher claw came down on your abdomen; you bucked, curling your central tail fin to scoot away. He attempted another strike; you ripped through his rostrum, took his beady eye with your massive pincher claw.Your victory was decisive, his retreat swift.I was inundated with the scent of urine released from the sacs along your face. My antennule soaking up the smell of you, pleopods quivering in answer to your dominance. The neurons of my cardiac ganglion fired, heartbeat racing in anticipation of your tiny feelers running over my carapace.Finally—finally—you made your way to me among the rocks. We ran our bodies together, sharing pheromones laced with hope and promises of forever.Then you were gone. And I was alone, as always.Our offspring were many. They all grew to resemble you—perfect, miniature replicas of shining lapis-blue, with searching eyes and a drive to leave.Maybe tonight we’ll be swans, and you’ll stay.

MAGIC by James Callan

March 12, 2025

I was doing my damnedest to hide in a mountain of gold coins in the vaults of Gringotts. I was properly concealed, buried in all those glittery riches, all but my rock-hard arousal, which was like the mast of a mostly sunken ship sticking out of a sea of wealth. I couldn’t help it. I was thinking about Harry, his hairy treasure trail, his hot, wet mouth and warm goblet of fire. I moaned beneath the mound of resplendent wizards’ gold, panting within the riches of witches, which brought on the unwanted attention of a little ugly goblin. He wanted to put me out of my delicious agony, eat me up like Doritos, which bear the same triangular shape as the teeth that approached me in the mouth of a squat, bobble-head monster.I fell back onto the mound of gold, the creature falling with me. We got down and dirty in the riches of witches. And bitches, it was wonderful…how I made it with a goblin. Holding hands, we left the vault behind, our pockets stuffed with doubloons and diamonds. I brought the little guy home and, side-stepping my Hogwarts LEGO set that spread out like a Minecraft palace across the floorboards, led him to my bed.At that point I got desperate, realizing that I finally outdid myself, had too many damn Butterbeers, because, boner or no, I couldn’t hold back a dire piss that needed to be taken. I grabbed my magic wand --3 inches long, made of “wood,” a phoenix feather tucked in my bush-- and said the magic word: Riddikulus!Sometimes a piss feels as good as fellatio.Like a champ, Shorty took it right in the mouth. I found myself in awe, wishing I could dispel my issues as easily as the wastes that pass through me umpteen times a day. If only life were that easy. Gosh, wouldn’t that be magic?

A BEETLE TRAPPED IN GLASS by Meghan Proulx

February 5, 2025

First, he’s packed and put on ice like a seabass. Then he’s put in a state of vitrification and becomes a non-crystalline amorphous solid like a beetle trapped in glass. Seeing him during this time is like visiting someone in a coma, except I can’t touch him because there’s a risk of shattering. For one month a year, his body is reheated and drained of all preservation liquid. This is when the science happens and I find out what it means for him to have donated his still-living body to science. There are educational posters about it on all the walls. They describe the process beautifully, using metaphors about butterflies to great effect. My mother and I visit him daily during the month. We watch specialists poke at him, inject him with diseases, and test him with trial-stage medications. One experiment goes wrong and he loses a foot. In exchange for his body, we’re paid generously. We can afford organic groceries now. My dad also receives a retirement fund and a promise that if he dies before his term is up, our family will get a payout. This happens in about 35% of cases.I’ll be forty when he’s warm again and when I imagine our reunion we’re looking at each other with similarly lined faces. His doctor tells me to be thankful, the facility says we should be proud, and after several years his body helps them find a cure. His sacrifice is for you they say, and so I wear my gratefulness as best I can and when the doctor turns away I touch my father's fingers. They’re soft, like the inside of a slipper, and when I leave I feel his handprint on me and bring it home where all the pieces left behind live.

WANTED: DANCE PARTNER by Brian Benson

January 25, 2025

It’s late afternoon, day five million of this insatiable year, and I’m melting into an overstuffed chair, doing whatever I’m doing on my computer—checking email, collecting fun facts about my father’s mortality, finding new things to be ashamed of—when suddenly I hear a sound like a leaking balloon and I glance up and there he is, the dog I’ve married into owning, lying belly up on the couch, looking like he was dropped from a helicopter and landed comfortably on his back. Paws to the sky, tongue lolling from his mouth. He’s taking me in with upside-down eyes, waiting to see if I’m going to move in the direction of the door that leads to squirrels or the door that leads to the box full of the matzoh he’s recently developed a taste for. I’m not. I’m not even his real dog dad. I’m just a sad guy in a big chair, looking at a dog over the top of the computer I’m too often looking into, thus the neck pain, the ache behind my eyes, between my lungs. I shut the computer, though, and as I do, the dog cocks his head, angling for a better view of my feet. He’s got one front paw folded, the other extended, like young Travolta. He’s half asleep but looking to dance. He’s ready if I am.

TEENAGED GIRL GROWS ANTENNA IN SCHOOL BATHROOM STALL #3 by Suzanne Richardson

January 22, 2025

I always thought I was a science project. Maybe all girls are. Today I listen too hard and become a sound reflector, sound detective. I click my converse and my head splits like Zeus. Through my skull my alloy daughter emerges. She is like me but picks up gossip frequencies. Particular metal. Flagellum and scape. Dipoles and cables. A sci-fi fascinator for prom. Now more radio than girl. I lean, press, pick up the waves of other girls. Someone said the trees were moving, but it was the world. Silence does not exist here on the moon, in this girls bathroom. Talk, talk, talk. Some of it alien. Who is wearing a bra that doesn’t need one? I search for my name in the washroom static: somebody fell down the stairs at a party, somebody had sex, somebody is too messed up to go back to class, someone is climbing out the window, someone’s period, someone studied and failed, someone talked too much shit. My name isn’t on the air today. I will be patient and ritualistic. I will take tests instead of falling out of the nest. One day soon I will be on the girl radio and they’ll send my name up like a rescue flare asking me how I got out.

THE CHILLED SUNLIGHT by Steve Gergley

January 19, 2025

In town there were a series of murders. Each attack occurred beneath the almond tree spiking through the pavement in the center of Second Ave. No one seemed to care. Everyone walked the sidewalks as if nothing strange had happened. They chatted about the weather and watched the mailman wander the knotted maze of the streets. They met up for brunch and dinner and played games with their children and dogs in the park. My wife and I were terrified. We drove to the supermarket using an alternate route each day. We avoided our friends on the weekends in fear of their possible secret lives of violence. We breathed the flakes of obsidian in the air and vomited blood into the downstairs toilet each night. It was a strange year. In December, the wagonwheel of reeking bodies disappeared underneath a jagged tarp of glistening snow. The engines of our cars screamed upon starting. Our neon lips shimmered within the milky glow of the chilled sunlight.

NOT HANDLED WITH CARE by M.A. Boswell

January 11, 2025

After Olivia tore out of the parking lot, Hyundai stuffed with all the nice shit from their place, Josh mixed batter and slammed it into a bruised Teflon pan. He’d survived on easy food before, when other exes ruined his life. Josh flipped the pancake, watched it coil into a lopsided heap. Earlier, Olivia changed the title of their shared playlist from Babe to You’re a literal adult child, deleted everything except one Taylor Swift breakup song. Josh rammed his spatula under the wreckage, realizing how bad this would be. The pancake grinned from the plate, torn and ugly, but never judging.

NEEDFUL by Scott Garson

December 15, 2024

Needful men, undisciplined men, look at me, and keep looking at me. My sense: it is out of compulsion. They like what they feel when they’re taking me in. They want to have more of that feeling. This boy, nineteen, thereabouts, is different. He camouflages the work of his glance in little shows of expression: it is as if he is tangled in thought. Then he goes back to his work on the page. He’s drawing. Drawing me. I say, “Let’s see it.”The boy has also hidden the fact that he’s seen me approaching his table. He blinks, unbothered, holding my gaze. I get that he’s managed to flip a page in his sketchbook. Sleight of hand. He says, “Pardon?”I smile and give a nod at the book, which the boy then turns to display. The drawings feature a man, the same man. In a sense, they’re pretty faithful: tight and scrupulous acts of capture. In another sense, they are secret romance: attuned, by weight and shading, to the question: what this person shows. Who this person is. I say, “Those are good.”“Thank you,” the boy responds, as if glad to be sure of his lines. I say, “Let’s do this.”Which is my line, and which I’m also glad to be sure of. But it’s true: I feel like I’m ready. Like I have been waiting, and for a long time. I see the boy deciding not to act like he doesn’t know what I mean. I see him looking at me in a new way. More the usual way. I peer at him. “Do it,” I say. “Turn the page.”

TWO MICROS by JP Vallières

December 14, 2024

T BALL

There’s a tee ball league for grownups. You have to be thirty-five to participate. Thirty-five is the cutoff. If you’re younger you’re not old enough. Joe hit a homer his first time at bat. We cheered and gave him back and butt slaps while he rounded the bases. We hoped to do the same. There was real glory to be had. Trisha hit a double, which is pretty respectable. Donny bunted, we think it was a joke, but Donny seemed ill-humored. Perhaps it was strategy? In the bottom of the seventh, the last inning, I came up to bat. Joe (who was going for the cycle) suffered a pulled hammy, he couldn’t risk further straining a muscle he hadn’t used in decades. I wasn’t supposed to play. I had just joined the team. They didn’t seem to want me at first but I had an in with the coach. He’s my stepdad, Greg. Greg always let me do stuff with him. All I had to do was beg. Before I got up he slapped my back, spit tobacco on my shoe, and told me if I didn’t win this one for the team I’d be a total failure, like Mom.

FLOOD II

There are species that didn’t make the ark. Some were not chosen. Others simply chose not to board. A gator with monkey fists. A cat, but there were already too many cats. Opossum like reptile with gills. There were chickens that could move boulders by clucking. Plenty of orphaned dog breeds. A monster that sang sweet songs of remorse. Something called a Liptirloot, which cannot be compared to anyone or anything. Unicorns never made it. Neither did the winged liger. But none died. They’re on the bottom of the ocean, biding their time. In the underark. Huddling behind a gate caked in salt.