Category: Side A

Side A: “OUR SPERM COUNT IS DOWN!,” a collaborative work by Vi Khi Nao & Jessica Alexander

OUR SPERM COUNT IS DOWN! We watched a magic-heist last night. It was like J.K. Rowling wrote an episode of Law & Order & David Mamet directed it. We thought the magicians were one step ahead of the law but the law was the greatest magician of all. We agreed the female lead was too pretty…
“O Pen the State/open the say/ate the stated,” a Side A Poem by Tony Mancus

O Pen the State/open the say/ate the stated We are always one link from disaster blinking the clouds top the mountains like thought bubbles from the earth with a silhouette of a person crossing above the road some wearing a reality backdrop/terminus and beginning/eventually the body forgets how to swallow the mirror in every eye shaving reality drops behind its work zone sign blinking cream true what roots we…
Side A: “The Borg EP,” a comic by Rachel Busnardo

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. The Borg EP Mini-interview with Rachel Busnardo HFR: Can you share a moment that has shaped you as a writer (or continues to)? RB: There are lots of moments that have shaped me as a writer, some big, but many were very, very small little pin pricks…
Side A Video Poem Collaboration by Penn Kemp & Gary Barwin: “The Female Line”

A note on the media: Gary Barwin created the video poem in collaboration with Canadian poet Penn Kemp. Kemp wrote the text but Barwin set it with music and visuals and they both performed it. The Female Line Some small part of us is held in our mother’s egg whenshe is in our grandmother’s womb, …
“Distance and Memory,” a Side A Essay by Jason Zuzga

My grandmom Victoria (Tomaro) Stracquadanio born in Boiano, Italy, immigrant to Bound Brook, New Jersey, subsequently married John of Modica, Sicily. At the age of 21, I visited both towns. She, widowed, is suffering, at 99-years old, from vascular dementia at a nursing home near my mom’s home. My grandmom is now under the protocols…
Side A: “Taxonomy of Amnesia,” a poem by Tam Nguyen

Taxonomy of Amnesia I swear I’d trade my body to remember and instantly regret it. Ma and Ba—children of sweat-glazed faces, too-short ribs. Their spines the bridges connecting no worlds. Am I your son at all?The answer a teethmark left on a just-ripened bomb. Anywhere on earth my body will be hijacked by explosions, even…
Side A Short Story: “Fragments in Color” by Chella Courington

Fragments in Color 1 When a kid I kept running away from home to see if Mama still wanted me. Never far and always to the corrugated camp near Sunset. I drank chicory with Maggie and chalked pink flamingos on the concrete. Tall yellow legs, long feathers with curved necks turned right. Beaks dark as…
“I want a new car, I told you.” a Side A prose poem by Hannah Grieco

I want a new car, I told you. but what I want is to smash the windows of our minivan, to take the chainsaw out of the shed, to push the ignition and hear it sputter and forget for a moment how to run before coming to life, to feel it growl in my hands,…
Side A Poem: “Indigo Froth” by Benjamin Niespodziany

Indigo Frothfor Boris Vian It’s an old robe story. Old folktale. Woman surrounds herself with flowers and dies. Petals wilt. Plates squirm. Mounds gather a mattress of warmth. Acorns made for testing. When she dies, her blood is paper. Here’s some money back, the director replies. The sky is cardboard. Like in the flickers. He…