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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 again, a ham in its plastic among its teeth. The dog got to the hill, stumbled, the ham set loose and tumbling down. The bear watched it roll until it hit the creek, a little plosh.Dog’s going to be unhappy, he said.Bear’s going to be pissed, she said.He pressed against her. Thighs, groin, stomach.Everything about you, she said.All about you, he answered.The bear, the dog, was rolling in the creek. It howled. Another world of pleasure in its sound.

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 irritation to their stomach lining because of the booze. Usual fare, cheeseburgers, hotdogs and Coca Cola. The latter would be used to mix double rum and cokes before taking in the majesty of the large African mammals, the giraffe, elephant, rhino and hippopotamus (latin for “river horse” Dutta explained smugly). A single shot of blended scotch would be sufficient before mounting the camels and riding naked across the Sinai. But at least another double rum and coke, if not a treble, would be necessary to steel oneself for gator wrestling in front of a crowd of whooping sorority members from Oxford, Mississippi. It would reek of clove cigarettes. And finally, on a quieter note, the four of them would end their day beside the tiger enclosure at the far end of the zoo. Perhaps at this juncture a magnum of champagne would be produced from the large, intangible folds of a Burberry overcoat. A tiger had once spared Dutta’s father decades ago when he was a boy in Darjeeling. It’s a story Dutta Senior told often.

WHAT WE REMEMBER by Jorden Makelle

November 18, 2024

What you remember is riding scooters around the cul-de-sac on sun-soaked summer mornings. Me pushing you on our swing set in the backyard. A scruffy white dog lapping up water, its tail wagging. Her blessing the food, pork chops and green beans and cornbread. Running under sprinklers barefoot, tufts of grass tickling our toes. Red and blue and white popsicles staining our tongues. Him lowering the basketball goal in the driveway so you could play. Saturday morning cartoons and chocolate sprinkle donuts. Sunday morning church and lunch at Luby’s. What I remember is always sitting quietly, so very quietly. The all A honor roll. Chewing the insides of my cheeks until they bled. The sound of a hair dryer thrown at the wall. A pair of eyes gone black and vacant. Wondering if Jesus was going to come back anytime soon. Red and blue and white lights flashing in the driveway. Scratchy hotel bedsheets and locked doors. Him calling her crying, begging us to come home. Holding you and telling you that you were going to be okay. Because I knew you would be okay. Because you were far too young to remember.

TWO MICROS by Amy Barnes

October 17, 2024

Gone FishingBefore they bury your father, you eat plastic bags of goldfish, stack tuna fish sandwiches into stomach skyscrapers, slurp salmon off wood boards, down sardines from sharp containers, sing duets with big mouth bass, lick rainbow book fish, and laugh as clown fish swim in your belly.When there’s no room for bait or folding fortune-telling fish, you see fish floating in your blood, ichthyology meshed with humanology, swimming upstream, upcolon, eyeballs bulging behind yours. You sleep, flopping restlessly on your deck, fish guts and blood as a mattress. You beg fishmongers to swing your legs and arms across 5:00 AM catch-of-the-day piles. You pretend your eczema is scales and scratch until there are patches all over.You buy a mermaid tail for your niece, but wear it first in your clawfoot tub with its Poseidon feet and trident legs. You plan a trip to a mountain stream to battle bears for salmon.The funeral parlor owner holds his nose when you arrive in a Mrs. Frizzle fish-patterned dress and fish hook earrings. You bring tuna fish sandwiches for the after-service potluck. A long-haired man hands out fish and bread. You consider asking if he knows Jesus’ other miracles, especially the one with Lazarus.The fishing schedule is printed on your dad's program next to scriptures about the Leviathan. He missed opening day by a week, we always went together, you tell your cousins and aunts. There are fish swimming in his clear coffin like a toilet seat cover full of plastic fish. He’s wearing his Hawaiian fish shirt, the one your mom picked for the last family vacation luau.You can’t find farewell words because you're too full of fish. A rainbow trout falls out of your mouth and catches all the light in the room. Bereavement Fare Your shoes are white when you board. You have no luggage. No one fights to get on the plane first. Two people are dragged on. The stewardesses wear dark wigs with bangs that make them look like spies. Fishnet hose and black airplane-issued shoes. Some in slacks, others dark crinolines. All in jaunty death scarves imprinted with skulls.Their faces are as pale as yours, with Raggedy Ann blush blots. “Welcome aboard,” they say.One hands you a warm cloth. It unfolds into a damp American flag. Small children carry Colorform books with coffin and skeleton stickers. You step through coffee grounds smushed into your shoes. At seat 6, the grounds are replaced with the odors of potting soil and black mulch mixed with manure. Your nose burns. When you sit, a sea of darkness rises to your neck.You pull the airsick bag out. Your mother’s high school graduation picture is on the back next to her obituary. She’s smiling. Your seat mates stare at their grandmother and uncle. Died doing what she loved. Wife. Mother. Friend. Teacher. The plane takes off. Stewardesses stumble with tuna casseroles in aluminum pans and pound cakes in frozen foil. Black coffee in floral teacups. Your seatmates sleep because they’ve ordered sedatives. You didn’t.A Star is Born plays on everyone’s screen. Then, Steel Magnolias. The stewardesses have shovels with airplane logos. They slide coffins into the empty dinner compartments and toss in dirt. The plane is landing soon. They announce. But no one’s listening. They’re eating lukewarm casserole and crying over Shelby. The plane lands. You pull a carved wood box from the overhead compartment. The second passenger in your row is refusing to get off the plane.Everyone else exits, leaving behind only black footprints on the gate’s carpet.

THREE MICROS by Sarp Sozdinler

October 1, 2024

BUTTHOLE PROBLEMSWhat’s it, what’s it, I can hear you saying, what’s even a butthole problem, or what’s a butthole other than being a problem in itself, of itself, that sounds to me like a butthole problem, butthole, a butthole that rashes like hell after a hot date, that itches like a motherfucker after a night well spent at Taco Bell’s, unlike some other buttholes that smell like proper buttholes, buttholes that smell like years of regret and day-old butter, buttholes that gossip about other buttholes in family functions, about Steve Bannon, about Santa Claus, buttholes that dream of traveling far away and broadening their buttholes, buttholes that wish they could trade their buttholes for other things—a roof, some money, fair sex—buttholes that burn with regret in the mornings, buttholes that should deal with external threats, like inflation, like novel viruses, like lubricants and penetration, buttholes that go on around other buttholes like can we make this happen, how can we make this happen, buttholes that bear smaller buttholes inside them like a Russian doll of buttholes, buttholes that could turn cancerous—if not malodorous—if left unattended, buttholes that could move from one butthole of a place to another, like from Texas to another part of Texas, or straight from Texas to hell, a hell that’s not particularly literal or metaphorical, not even allegorical, a hell where demons could famously roast your butthole on a spit, a hell that could make you feel at home and wish you didn’t even have a butthole in the first place, that you didn’t have a life after all, that you didn’t come into this world, into this body, most certainly not this body attached to this particular butthole you were born with, have to carry with, live with, laugh with, die with, halfwit. A DROWNINGEach of us was supposed to either push the turtles over the pier or jump into the water ourselves.Jimmy said, “How many turtles?” and we had to explain to him that one would do. Though I could tell he wasn’t fully convinced, he took the news in good faith. He checked us out one by one, then gently grabbed a turtle from its shell in his last act of mercy. His arms quivered in hesitation before he tossed the turtle into the lake like a skipping stone.“How’s this exactly a punishment?” he turned to ask upon the unclimactic silence. It was a fair question. Though the gist of the game wasn’t about punishment, there was something about meeting up this late, far from our homes, that lent the whole ordeal an unmistakable element of sin. If my sister were still here, she would tell us all about her own wrongdoings, about how testy the waters could be when provoked at just the wrong time.But she could no longer talk, no longer breathe.“It’s where they come out from.” It was Cornball who finally broke the silence, who then picked up the remaining turtle and catapulted it into the water with a kind of intensity that made me assume he had some unfinished business with the turtle kind, or that he was resolving some unfinished business he had with someone else with turtles.We all stood in a delicate silence before someone said we should go back. The crickets filled the air with chirrups, another mark of the South. When we arrived at the car we found the main road deserted, which made me feel as if everyone was dead and we were stuck in some kind of limbo. I could almost hear my sister calling me a dickhead from beyond. COVENANTFor Pim’s seventh birthday we pin her to the ground and shout “Eat shit, you human” by her side, Cane’s homemade Xenomorph costume torn from the thighs, revealing the sponges he filled his crotch with to make it bulge, all while clawing at Pim’s ketchup-stained chest with his needle-like tinfoil fingers, watching Pim’s head jerk to left and right as if slapped by a pair of phantom hands, shouting “Stop,” strictly in character from the start, Pim is our Ripley for the day though she looks nowhere near Sigourney Weaver, she’s half-German and standing at 4-foot-5 but she’s the birthday girl anyway so we keep our mouths shut and try to have fun, except for her brother Percy who stands all brickfaced on the porch like Michael-frikkin-Meyers when he was supposed to play Ripley’s crewmate, but it’s no surprise, he’s known to be a softie like his dad who’s now babysitting Pim’s newborn sister in the rocking chair, smiling and winking at us every few minutes like that one weird uncle in every family——and Pim suddenly elbow-strikes Cane’s jaw and somersaults to say, “Hope you like soup, motherfucker,” grinning at us all Ripley-Ripley, showering us with what remained of her piss in her nerf gun, we Xenomorphs glancing at each other as if we’re truly done, Cane starting to wail through his broken teeth, his head peeping out of his tinfoil Xenomorph costume like a chick in a hatching egg, and that’s when Percy shows a sign of life and starts to run toward us like a good crewmate, screaming out obscenities and cries of revenge, his habit of eating beef jerky for the past three months nonstop finally showing through his self-confidence, and Cane turns to me like a rabbit caught in the headlights and says, through his swollen gums, “Wow.”

LITTLE CLOUD by Magda Phili

July 26, 2024

Wouldn’t it be good if I could for a moment close my eyes and find myself in a new scenery where nature plots towards a personal renaissance, a scenery in which I would be able to switch off this painful backlog of asymmetry in my life; lack of funds and lack of kindness, and lack of this and lack of that, lack of that mesmerizing color of the sky like in a Vermeer painting, or any sky of any painting or any sky on earth under which I can walk free from tormenting clouds of thought that make me a prisoner and a punisher pressing me to provide solutions that I don’t have. I can only be responsible for my own actions; but then again, that is the problem. Actions can have devastating, dramatic repercussions even with best intentions, even with love and because of love. Gallantry buried with bare hands, puzzle pieces that won’t fit anymore in a puzzle that was once immaculate.Wouldn’t it be good if for a moment I could be a seed buried into new soil where the grass is freshly cut, and the water masks the green with delight and lucidity or perhaps I could be given a new chance and become a little cloud over your tears or a birdhouse for the little warrior that is you who got its wings halved in its attempt to fly through ferocious winds.

STUMP REMOVAL by Andrew Graham Martin

July 21, 2024

I saw a sign for stump removal and found myself wishing I had a stump that needed removing.Or, more exactly, I wished that should I ever have a stump that needed removing I’d see a sign like that one. Or, put yet another way, I wished that in my life I could see the things I need to see right when I need to see them. Not before, and not after.

DAD FIGHTS by Matt Rowan

July 20, 2024

“Sometimes dads fight,” Dad says. “It’s just a thing we have to do sometimes.” That’s how Dad explained it to me the first time, and he hasn’t bothered explaining it in any greater depth since. Every spring my dad starts preparing to fight again. He spends long hours in the garage with his misshapen Everlast heavy bag he bought from DICK’S Sporting Goods many years ago. “It does the trick,” he says, bareknuckling it with even more gusto. He’s fighting the same fight he’s been fighting since I was born, something about some kind of disagreement that nobody really remembers the details of, but my dad has never forgotten, and is not willing to let go. It’s not totally clear who he thinks he’s fighting, either. He only ever referred to them as his “adversaries,” adding that they “need to be taught a lesson,” and “soon we’ll all know who’s the better man.” Then beginning on June 21st at dusk, he sets off to go fight. He might not be home till morning, he tells us. He might be a little bruised when he gets back, but he insists I’m not to worry about him too much. This is all simply what he must do.Mom has said it’s best to let him have this. “Try not to make a big deal out of it,” she has said. “It’ll only fuel his will to fight all the more if you do.” But it’s not as though Dad can be stopped even if we all wanted to stop him. He becomes a living rampage. I just go about hugging him every night, the same as always, wishing him luck. I always remind him I’ll be there to dab his wounds in the morning.

2000s MOVIES ARE AS OLD NOW AS 80s MOVIES WERE IN THE 2000s by Tanner Armatis

July 14, 2024

Dallas Jones tweeted. The fear washed my wrinkles in goosebumps. I Know What You Did Last Summer now as predictable as rain. I am my brother maxing out his credit card. American Psycho is being remade. I am my father wondering about the vote. Idiocracy now a prophetic tale. I am my mother cleaning dishes for different reasons. Lord of the Rings lives on forever. I am the door to other lives. I scrolled.

WE DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE THE ASTRONAUT by daniel joseph

July 13, 2024

we didn’t even know we were in a rickshaw-type town, but it was a good thing we were, being out of time & money & the rickshaw seeming quicker than walking & like a pay-what-you-can type operation. we were already confused on so many levels – in a real uncertain bind, our heads bouncing along the ground behind us. we didn’t even notice the astronaut when we climbed aboard & about sat on him – as little as he was. but he said he didn’t mind the company, that he was just riding around for the ride of it & that is when he told us about being an astronaut & all. he looked more like a tree-topper to us. he didn’t have a suit on or boots or a patch or one of those hats they tend to wear, but he went right into telling us about being the only composer to ever see the sunrise from the outside of a spaceship on the other side of the moon – about how he had been sent to space on a singular mission to write a symphony about what it feels like up there, an opera about what it looks like up there, a fugue about what it is up there & that in a roundabout way was why he was here on this rickshaw; or, at least, that is what we think he might have said, the rickshaw being a bumpy, noisy ride & us not really hearing well to begin with & worrying about when we should jump off on account of us forgetting just where our stop was or if these things even had stops or what it was we truly owed.