Category: Side A

The rule: send ONE standalone poem, essay, story, comic, manifesto, anomaly to “Side A.” Published works appear alongside short-form interviews and, if possible, YouTube audio.

Hybrid Essay for Side A: “Post-Mortem Report No. 0607-EX” by Atreus Fong

POST-MORTEM REPORT NO. 0607-EX EXAMINER: [REDACTED]SUBJECT: Male, 29 years old.DATE OF EXAMINATION: Ongoing. I. EXTERNAL EXAMINATION The body presents no visible or any obvious trauma. Facial musculature is disciplined; trained into neutrality. No signs of impact, struggle, or force. No outward signs that anything is, or even could be, wrong. This is typical. Observed behavioral…
Laurie Price for Side A: Two Poems

Star Shining to get to the trees.Of light, of exact evening.A crescent whistles, scissorsin a narrow path. A long transitpasses at night pluckingat its verges. Who goes there?Who? Who gets to seam insidewith its out? A white lily like a talisman. Its light. Planted a little, partlyblack or walled—or buried. Justnot there in the dark,…
Side A Flash Nonfiction: “High Maintenance” by Jade McGregor

High Maintenance After my mentally ill ex moves out, I, also having moved the mental illness goalpost right off the soccer pitch, start doing things again: using bar soap, taking milk-less jugs to the return-it depot, vacuuming. I drip water all over the bathroom counter if I want. I pull the crown off the tub…
New Hybrid for Side A: “Like the Air Is a Needle” by Kate Catinella

So the kids turn it into some sort of game with a lot of screaming. “How many balloons did you” POP AHHHHHHH “Did you say you bought again?” “Fifty, but it was a deal where you” POP AHHHHHHH “Let’s just say” POP AHHHHHHH “Let’s just say there was a lot for the taking. Had to…
New Side A Short Story: “Nobody Cares” by Jacob Austin

Finding himself with a rare Tuesday off, Laramie decides to catch a movie. He had been told the local theater offered five-dollar matinees on Tuesdays, and while there is not anything playing he particularly wants to see, he had been at Target the other night and smelled the popcorn from the snack stand and has…
Side A Short Story: “My Oncologist” by Trevor J. Houser

My Oncologist After being told I had a year to live, I decided one evening to visit my oncologist’s private residence in Pacific Heights. It is a very nice neighborhood. Homes like state capitol buildings clad in armor of Italian cypress. When I arrived at my oncologist’s address, a stream of people in costume was…
New Side A Prose Poetry: “A Meditation on Birds and Other Things After Watching It Was Just an Accident” by Sarah Dickenson Snyder

A Meditation on Birds and Other Things After Watching It Was Just an Accident I know very little about Iran, and yet there are familiar crow sounds in the beginning of the movie where cars dart on busy roads and one man digs a dusty grave in the desert. Nothing feels safe there. Crows squawk…
“Grief Algebra”: New Side A Flash Fiction by Mileva Anastasiadou

Grief Algebra We sit in silence around a table of four. We’re only three, because someone is missing. His chair is empty and will remain silent until someone visits and sits there, unaware of the value this chair held. We’ll look at them like they’re undefined operation, like they’re savage or sacrilegious and they won’t…
Poetry for Side A: “A Branch Where Things Went Terribly Wrong” by Salvatore Difalco

I am not a single person moving through a single story.I am a multiplicity, a sprawling bush of eventssprouting new branches. This version of me tooka left turn at the intersection. Another version tooka right turn. That version avoided the catastrophethat greeted this version shortly after makingthe ill-fated left turn. I had wanted to turn…