Category: Print Archives

Four Poems by Cynthia Marie Hoffman

[After the operation, my sister needs help] After the operation, my sister needs help getting out of bed. My mother’s bare feet gum the slick floor, bracing. My sister leans into her arms. The dogs’ eyes are wide. The two eyes of my mother’s blonde dog, the one eye of my sister’s whose bad eye…
Fiction: Timmy Reed’s “Minutes from Meeting of Afterdeath Board of Directors”

Minutes from Meeting of Afterdeath Board of Directors 12:00 PM January 1, 2012 Thin Gray Wrinkle In Between Spaces (Room #0) Attending: Skeletons, wights, high and low gods, sense of desperate loss (DESPAIR), TIME, decaying globs of flesh, beetles, worms. Death attended via conference call. Presenters included Lipsticked Fetus and Waxed Tentacle of the Soul…
Poetry: Four Yelp Reviews by J. Bradley

Yelp Review: Boy Scout Troop 43 You will hold a flag, march through sweltering nervous systems: upper arms waggle in salute. There are patches for activities, a business card thin license to wield a knife: this is a tool for picking teeth clean, a magnifying glass to play God; the fire never answers. Yelp Review:…
Three Poems by Robert Balun

Self (American Continuum) I wake up: and my leg hurts my achilles specifically and I wonder if the body is finally eating itself I drink old water and can never catch up it just keeps pouring I switch and ask if this is the coffee promised to us by the management during the labor dispute…
Fiction: “A Stranger Never Comes to Town” by Jessica Alexander

My first brother was a cockatoo on the shoulder of a much older woman, who called herself Madame La Cava, spoke bad French, and feigned clairvoyance. I said, “Know how to hurt what you love?” He held her hoop earring in his beak. She said, “Vous voulez me devorer avec baisers, mon canard.” I said,…
Three Illustrations by Eben Kling

*Ed.’s Note: click images to view larger sizes. Big Flood Double Man Good Joke Eben Kling received his BFA from Montserrat College of Art in 2009 and his MFA from Umass Amherst in 2015. Most recently he has shown at the Miller Yezerski Project Space and Gallery Kayafas in Bostom MA, Nopop Gallery and Artspace in…
Poetry: Suzi F. Garcia’s “Dirt Skirt Divas Present No Man’s Land”

Painted roses on my lips, feather lashes wink wink blink tonight Gloves come off one finger at a time, nails glitter gray. Work the angle, work my angles, get a cheap pop from the crowd, hit a high spot, just a little grunt-and-groan. Take a hit, take a bump, thumbtacks in the fleshy backsides of…
Fiction: “The Pregnant Milessa” by Nick Kocz

The Pregnant Milessa had been awaiting the birth of her first child for nine years. Sonograms foretold a boy but, though she had vague recollections of being clumsily diddled by some guy reeking of beer, date rape drugs were prevalent and she had no knowledge of the father or the act that led to her…
Two Poems by Ally Harris

Ayreamd Color, orb ring—fur, lie, rise serious, heavyhead I shoulder mind on. Pleasurethis conversion as the ram ray sparkest thusa cranial lace over the gun-lined crag. I taught myselfthis many other things shod formamong the famine-sad window of the shearwelcomed the final element douched from rafter tatters, gapedhalf peripheral in sleep’s hood foddered film-likein a…