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GREGOR MENDEL NEVER KNEW MY FATHER by Kristin Tenor

June 28, 2021

Mr. Chavez stands in front of the classroom and talks about peas. Green peas, yellow peas, wrinkled peas, smooth-as-Mr. Chavez’s-bald head peas. He says when two different varieties are sown together under a blanket of dark, loamy soil, they sometimes yield plants with pods containing green and wrinkled peas or yellow and smooth or maybe they’ll come out the same shade of chartreuse as the faded bridesmaid’s dress hidden in the back of your mother’s closet, the one she wore the night she met your father and got drunk on wild dandelion wine for the first time and conceived you, although she’ll never in a million years say so. You can tell just fine by the way her fingers wrap themselves around the hanger as she keeps shoving it further and further back until it’s pressed tight against the wall.

THREE MICROS by Evan Jerome Williams

June 24, 2021

Carl

Carl is a cobra with nine eyes. Carl has seven too many eyes, and none of them see well. He has difficulty finding eyeglasses that work for him on account of his extra eyes.

Carl needs eyeglasses to read. He is a scholar studying applied reptilian physics, a discipline primarily concerned with asteroid-detection and trajectory-disruption techniques. Carl needs eyeglasses so he can protect us.

Carl found an eye doctor who used to be a pirate. The eye doctor poked out seven of Carl’s eyes with precise stabbing motions, then made as many eyepatches with equal precision.

Carl looks like a badass. He has the right number of eyes for eyeglasses now. Carl is going to save the world.

This Is A Threat

I bought an orange sweater at the mall and decided to wear it to my dermatology appointment. Dermatologists study my skin because it is multi-layered, and that is unusual. They want to understand it. When I got there they asked me to take the sweater off. “Please, sir,” they said, “we need to see your layered dermis.” I couldn’t take it off. “I can’t,” I told them, “It’s a new layer of my skin.” I tugged at it. “See?” I said. They walked to the other side of the room to consult their notes. They consulted one another. They all nodded and came back. The dermatologists fanned out around me. “This is a threat,” they said. “Take off your sweater,” they said. “Take off your sweater so we can study you.” They anaesthetized me and peeled it like a sunburn.

Amos

Amos is a man I met in a hot tub. Famous. Famous Amos in a hot tub with me. This makes me famous. Amos says so, in the hot tub where we are both famous. Amos has cookie shorts. Chocolate chip, I think, or raisin. Raisin cookie shorts for Mr. Amos in the hot tub.

We are in Hawaii. I can’t remember if I mentioned that. Famous people are more common in places like Hawaii. Maybe I should omit this detail. Or alter it.

The hot tub in Arkansas. Arkansas where few famous people are found at leisure. Arkansas, so unfamous as to be infamous for its unfamousness. Mr. Amos and I, famous, in the Arkansan hot tub. “Do you want some cookies?” he asks. “Yes I’d like that,” I answer.

THREE MICROS by Carolyn Oliver

June 14, 2021

Sunrise House

In the sunrise house walking on stilts, the snake-filled water rises. It’s Sunday morning. I am old, very old, my joints as conspicuous among my limbs as the lead strips between stained glass. I’ve lost my glasses. It’s not my house, but the house of a friend. You are not so concerned about what kind of friend he is to me because you are fixed on the snakes. They are not venomous, not large, not hungry, and though I have lost my glasses I can see the lovely bands of red and black and gold roiling through the water that slips up against the breakfront, the wicker rocker, the pine sides of the bookshelf. I am still afraid, you know. I’ve lost my glasses. We have been here a long time, well supplied, because no one is coming to save us. No one can catch a house on stilts. The air rushing through the windows is warm, the water—more alive than water ought to be—is cool, it’s a washcloth in the feverous night. I’ve lost my glasses and of course we are not in love and there’s nowhere we should be but here, this Sunday morning in the sunrise house.

Courting Disaster

The trick is to offer the unexpected: a drive to the market, an hour on the lake, saint-like conviction. Avoid ostentatious gifts. Bring fragile tokens: orchids, eggs, joy. He might need some time. While you plan, keep your mind occupied with the long game. Save for the ring. Name your children. And then, when he’s done waiting to happen, maybe tomorrow, or a good year, or some quiet heat-hazed afternoon in your hometown, he’ll accept your proposal. There’s the striking smile, then the settling: his face bland as a sugar cookie, ordinary as summer ice melting before you have a chance to drink.

Cross My Ocean

After we outgrew the hollow circle and the taste for falling together safely, we learned to lock our limbs into lines, face off equal across the blacktop. Bolder than whisperers,

some kid picks, and they call for you—come over, come over—either to break through their arms, bash fingers into fists, slam brick and skim tar, free—or to spring

back between ranks, belly full of ache, claimed.

come over, come over, come over, come over, come over, come over, come over, come

Now schoolyard sharks circle, don’t eat. They turn tender arms and fingers fronds to catch and keep. No one falls. They play until the sea’s all anemone and teeth.

THREE TRIPTYCHS WITHIN A TRIPTYCH, OR: SPINACH PIE by Benjamin Niespodziany

June 9, 2021

a multi-level triptych [1] Woodsman's Lint-Licked Pocketsafter Leśnik, the Slavik forest deity [a] Woodsman protects the forest by writing messages into the rocks. Messages in clock talk Woodsman doesn't understand. Messages in dirt. In fur. In bark. Important forest, he writes. Formative forest. Former corner, cornered form. [b] With beard of grass and vine, Woodsman wears skin of reed and tree and string. His stomach is a lake of fish. The torch he carries bares a blue flame. It assists in guiding his moon, in practicing the magic of being alone. Silence hangs like a stranger from his blanketed shawl. [c] Townsfolk knock on Woodsman's door but rarely does Woodsman sing. Hands of shamrocks, hands of stockings, pocketed stones to throw days later. The cave is vacant. They've named it. It pours from within. [2] Witch in Her Cloud Coughs Away from the Town [a] Witch collects an assembly of teeth. Horse, wolf, fox, man, beast. A new pair to wear every day. When night arrives, she returns the teeth to their jars as if to the jaws where once they helped. She closes her eyes. Her mouth like a child's, as soft as cave. [b] Witch lives in a cellar behind the stove and is known to mimic a mouse. She spins thread to honor the dead and climbs back up to her cloud. [c] This is Witch with the horse made of crows. Witch with the most vocal of vocalist ghosts. Her footprints, her claw marks in the bark of the trees. Her bear paces its cage. Her bear is so decorated in circles and still it does not help. [3] Play [a] Witch, Woodsman, Horse and Bear prepare a miniature play. A play on explanation, reads the letters in the bark. A play about town. [b] The stage is the forest. The townsfolk arrive in nines. Everything melts, swells, regenerates, opens. Townsfolk laugh up fully grown townsfolk. Bubbling, festering, elderly births. Woodsman knocks and saws down their horns. From launch to harvest, the moon turns into an orange. Then later a point, then later a skull. [c] Witch grabs with hands of ash. Witch touches trees and touches leaves and touches Woodsman and touches townsfolk and everything is coated in ash and many rush to cleanse but many, too, remain, leaving their stains in place, feeling this charcoal darkness, their feet spread wide like trees.

NOAH’S MILLENNIUM SOLILOQUY by Maggie Nye

May 31, 2021

I am building a space ark. I have the raw materials to begin. Many can be salvaged from the junkyard, which is the humble throne room of heaven’s inheritors.

Not that I believe in metaphors. We are all best served speaking simply, plainly, and with a cube of bullion under our tongues.

I have collected 130,000 pounds of aluminum rather easily. It took the better part of a century, but I am blessed with dreamless sleep all nights except Sunday, when I drown myself again and again in my indoor jacuzzi until my wife prepares the coffee.

To make a space ark fly, you must affix to its siding the wings of a sizable angel tribe. I was not compelled to do the butchering personally. Thanks be to God, he had them mailed to me first class on dry ice.

God does not need assurance of his own pardoning, but I have it on good authority that angels do not have functional nerve endings.

There is much that displeases God in the world he spawned. Lobsters, for example.

At the stroke of midnight on New Millennium’s Eve, the angel wings will stir with holy motion and the ark will initiate celestial ascent. You and I will not be aboard.

This is well. My children died so many thousands of years ago, and I have begun to move pieces of my home and body into the junkyard. Tomorrow I will move my neck and jacuzzi. I have been promised that my parts will be well used by the needful. You and your friend there are welcome to approach. Come see how easy I am to disassemble.

SMALL SMALL GOAT OR 羊鬼泡面 by Emily Lu

May 27, 2021

I was the most vocal opponent of article 94.1, a new hospital by-law permitting employees to outsource labour to ghosts. I wrote to the department head an ostentatious but sincere email defending the sanctity of patient care. They referred me to another committee, started a new subcommittee, requested further submissions of appendices, etc. The next day, I went to find the ghosts.

When I remembered the small small goat, it was a month later. I opened the fridge expecting death. It was standing on a side dish where I last saw it, unaffected by the cold. Its eyes unblinking. My immense relief sat horizontal in my chest, teetering, solid.

I had been blamed immediately for it. All of my roommates believed I had something to do with its appearance.

Easy, there were loads of ghosts around the hospital these days. I found a team on lunchbreak in the east stairwell. Their leader was a resident doctor which was for the best because they all loved to please, even after death. I e-transferred five ghosts to start immediately.

The small small goat’s hair was stuck up on one side, giving it a stormblown appearance. I offered it what I had on hand: antacids and deluxe instant noodles. After 3 minutes, I lowered the small small goat into the as advertised luxurious six-packet soak. The water level came up to its chin.

I no longer responded to email. The ghost team lead visited to discuss extending our contract. I set down the instant noodle cup. The steam curled in front of her.

If this were a Cdrama, the misunderstanding would last at least ten years. If this were a Kdrama, by episode 16 I’d find out I killed her through some prior oversight. If I were the glowing, oily sheen protagonist. If she told me she only consumes redemption arcs in the afterlife, I’d believe her.

SONATA by Daisuke Shen

April 30, 2021

For a long time now, all sound has been damp. Wrapped in mildew, white-fleeced, everyone’s voices turned to mist. I am the only one not contained within this quiet—me, who has always wished to be, more so than anyone else; me, the girl who could never stop singing.

I had tried all of the tricks, of course: stuffed my mouth with lagan scrounged from sea beds, weaned off of proteins and greens, hoping to become weaker. Yet the avalanche of notes poured out of my mouth like sludge; my crazed melodies frenetic and pinched as sand fleas.

The silence started two years ago at that strange rehearsal, where a man wearing a blue silk scarf played a piece on the piano outside of M. Franco’s cake shop. None of us had ever seen him before, nor seen a piano that size. We held our breath as he positioned himself on the bench, his fingers stretched and hovering above the keys. Perhaps this was the one we had been waiting for. Because of my incessant singing, I stood toward the back of the audience as I always did.

He began to play a symphony familiar to all of us, though there was something sinister to it, I realized—he had ripped away its flesh, plunged his fingers into its insides to rearrange the notes. Why did no one else think the mastication of this piece to be sinister? But everyone was amazed, unable to look away.

Even through my warbling, I heard the piano cry out as the man wrung its felt throat dry; its strained screams contorted in his hands into the softest lavender.

Long after he had strapped the piano onto his back and taken his leave, everyone continued clapping until the world was wrapped in static. Even their bodies became muffled, less opaque, dipping into one another’s on the street.

I, however, absorbed the piano’s grief. If people regarded me with contempt before, they now term me traitor to this town and its silence. I reside in a grey room in a grey building they have built underneath the ground, with just enough light that I can see the pen with which I write this letter, the only comfort that damned sonata that I sing again and again, as if I can be the one to save it.

SOMETHING IS KNOCKING by Sean Ennis

April 29, 2021

Grace and Gabe, after saying something very cutting—Grace, not Gabe—have gone to visit her parents and I am home with the dogs, in the shower, flooded with the memory of a woman I once slept with who kept demanding, “Look at me! Look at me!” It’s not, like, eudaemonic.

Then the dogs are going crazy. Something is knocking. They get very protective of the house when I'm in the shower. I don’t hurry.

And let’s be real clear: the dogs we rescued from the shelter? Did not rescue us. We do the nice, expensive things, and they basically hang out with their small, furry demands.

And let’s be clearer still: what Grace said about the séance I hosted being “poorly attended”? I was not alone.

I decided to wear the Yves Saint Laurent La Nuit De L’homme. Recently, I’ve been favoring the John Varvatos Vintage, but the Saint Laurent is Grace’s favorite and I miss her. Her friend, Colleen, once told me, “You don’t talk much, but you always smell good.”

It’s Meredith at the door, the woman who tried to kill Gabe. That’s not fair. The accident was three weeks ago, and he has stopped complaining about his bruised spleen. The hood of her car is still dented, and she is holding a plate of cinnamon buns, my favorite. She says, “I knew you were home.”

In the living room, I’m rethinking her. She has the familiar, submissive demeanor of someone trying to get off drugs. The logo of her jeans is outlined in rhinestone, and good God, they are bootcut. She sits inexplicably in the chair possessed by Grace’s dead grandmother.

“Did your family leave you?” she says.

“Permanently? No.” I say. “Or rather, none of your business.”

“You have pretty eyes,” she says. “Are they real?”

Notice, she does not apologize.

TWO-IN-ONE by Genta Nishku

April 26, 2021

That summer, the water in that city ruined my hair. After every wash, the same refrain: clumping and matting. A whole bottle of hair conditioner later, and I was at the dim-lit bar. A man gestured something at me with his eyes, while outside, the awkward artist typed his number in my phone. We’ll meet for lunch, he promised. The warm air made disassociation easier, even if the drinks were weak and the conversation hard to follow. I’d get drunk at home, I decided. Then the traces of the day would fade, present and future melting together, like the sky and sea whenever we’d take the long road to get far away. There are too many nights and not enough conclusions. Nothing ever happens for me, I told him, but what I meant was, I don’t let anything happen. If you remember what I said about your eyes, I’d ask him, please don’t tell anyone. It would betray my reputation. Later, the complaint about the water would become an ice-breaker. Who hadn’t had an experience with unsatisfactory water? All the papers talk about conditions of possibility and I refuse to look up what it means. What’s the use? The conditioner detangled my hair. I kept it wrapped in a towel—color’s up to your imagination—and I stood by the window. A woman at a window makes the story worth reading. It recalls the folktales of our childhood. In one of them, the woman fashions a body, her body, out of rags and hay, with tree branches for limbs. A branch arm sticks out, waving goodbye forever.

SINK by Elane Kim

April 16, 2021

When my brother was young, I fed him fruit that fell from the trees in our backyard. What I fed him wasn’t really fruit, but the buds of what would be sweet in the spring, and the not-fruit didn’t really fall from trees in our backyard, because there was no backyard. Back then, we lived in an apartment complex with studded walls and a pool that yawned and stretched past the pale sun. The children all thought the pool was haunted, including me, because somebody’s son drowned in it in the 60s or the 80s or some other era we saw through blurred television screens. We all knew the water was always awake: green and unmoving, glass-eyed and watching.

My brother was the smallest of us all, and the most afraid. Of drowning, I thought, or of the stillness that would follow. I knew he was young because he still believed in ghosts and spirits and mothers with mouths that said no. My brother was most like himself when he was with me: always hungry, always swallowing. The day my brother stopped being young was the day our mother left him poolside in midsummer. On that day, the sun was a rotting orange. I watched him sink like fruit, surfacing as white foam. I watched the water swallow him without ever having been hungry.

When my brother was young, so was I. I fed him not-fruit from not-trees and he ate and ate. That was before he knew wholeness in the arms of a mother, before he became the stillness of water.