Category: Side A

Side A Poetry: “Standing in rivers getting bit by mosquitoes without cell service” by Linea Jantz

Ed.’s Note: the poem is best viewed horizontal on a cell phone. Standing in rivers getting bit by mosquitoes without cell service mosquitoes rise from the river in avenging crescendo can you hear me now?heat pulses like a heartbeat on my skin air heavy with the breathof sun-baked pines and wild mint I made the…
New Side A Fiction: “Vesuvio” by Patricia Quintana Bidar

Vesuvio Salvador has suggested they meet at Vesuvio. For him, the bar is a place of nostalgia. Whereas, Luisa has never left San Francisco. Lives in that same rent-controlled studio on upper Grant, where she paints, teaches, and sleeps. She stops first for coffee and a sandwich at Trieste. “One clarifying gin,” she tells Jacques,…
New Side A Poetry: “Spicer’s Radar” by Michelle Bitting

Spicer’s Radar ~ after Jack Spicer after Marianne Moore In that moment no one exactly knows the direction the cloud swims or how my face looks going on its hungry journey. First, my fat heart unburies itself. Then, this handful of granola sanded with turmeric reminds me of gold. Passing as if it were sun.…
Fiction for Side A: “Lazarus Goat” by Jacob Austin

Lazarus Goat The goats dawdle in the field. They show no remorse for yesterday’s incident. I had been all set to go home. Nothing to do but call the goats in, count them, and lock the gate. Mopface and Lamby, the pair of massive komondors, were lying on either side of the entrance, their lion…
New Side A Short Fiction: “Clownskin” by Brent Joseph Johnson

Clownskin One afternoon the sky above us and the sky to the side of us gathered together into a strange and terrifying pattern. So we stopped what we were doing and pointed at it. Even our power-walkers and mail-carriers, even our demons and sasquatches, even our own actual clowns pointed in perplexity. “Holy shit,” we…
Side A Poem: “Middle Pain” by Naomi Bess Leimsider

Middle Pain Up against the faceless ghost clock again. Time is of the essence. Waiting for the one-sided middle pinch, that sets it all in motion. Cycle in. Cycle out. So, so smooth the way it sheds and grows. How it all goes. The inner mechanism slows and shifts. Only able to harness stillness, can’t…
New Side A Poetry: “The Bird’s Heart Stilled by the Roar of the Inferno” by Nwodo Divine

The Bird’s Heart Stilled by the Roar of the Inferno*For Ikenna, whose father was killed in a Boko Haram terrorist attack. He used to call me his little eagle. He’d hoist me high on his shoulders. From that perch, I could see the line where the burnt sky met the thirsty land. He said an…
Side A Hybrid: “X for the Straight Edge Kids” by Glenn Shaheen

X for the Straight Edge Kids heaven In the woods we built many forts with lumber we found (oops, stole) from around the neighborhood. We’d build platforms, sometimes they’d fall. We knew not to touch Lady Slippers—they were endangered. I don’t think I ever saw a mammal in the woods that wasn’t human. We thought…
Side A Poem: “Wandering” by Peter Leight

Wandering (Sailing) It’s a small boata child among boatsit only takes a second to walkfrom the front of the boatto the back and backagain under slender stringsof smoke rising over the boatover the water spreadingash on the waterholding onto the ropesto keep them from flappingor lifting sheets of smokethat soften without accumulatingor dissolving while the…