Category: Side A

Side A Poem: “Prodigal” by Michael Juliani

Prodigal My phone rings all hoursof the night with my grandmother wanting her mother, her sister,her husband, anyone dead who still walks the housein her mind. I repeat a script my mother taught meto soothe her back to sleep, then try it on myself,ears open to the screech owls and red-crowned parrotscommingled in the blue…
Side A: Two Poems by Wes Civilz

Bullet List of Shame-Based Issues ● The stunning fact of shame’s preeminence In all I say and do and make and think ● Blue gloomy penis: an impediment ● The lazy way I use my blood as ink ● Eating my food so fast I hate myself ● Wolfing down burgers easily, I’m busily Constructing…
Side A Fiction: “The joint is mine, the wine is yours” by Tomasz Lesniara

The joint is mine, the wine is yours London was lonely. Cold. Empty. As soon as the sun went down and all the pint glasses were sprayed with boiling water inside silver, industrial dishwashers—it was time for laptops and noodles. One of the most celebrated cities on the planet turned into an abandoned ship, drifting…
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…