Category: Side A

New Side A Short Story: “In Cahoots” by Terese Svoboda

In Cahoots My son looked at his plate and looked at the dog and said he needed to go. I was still serving myself, my wrist flicking out sauce from a pot with a spoon. I sighed, placed my half-filled plate on the table, and took his hand in mine. After finding the key that…
Side A Poem: “To the First Twenty Years, Give or Take” by Anthony Robinson

To the First Twenty Years, Give or Take It was a childhood of chain link fences &a dozen kinds of rain an alluvial epochof brain & bone & polyhedral dicemuddy ditches & fir trees mailbox rows Dogs in single file. these words a surfeit of clinking changerender the past a cosmic vending machine primer gray…
New Poem for Side A: “Kandinsky” by Sandy Berrgian

Kandinsky I entered a dream worldof color and fireDay and nightgarden and fieldegg and dragonflyFlag and footballThis form a science fiction. Mini-interview with Sandy Berrgian by Rod Roland RR: What can you tell me about this poem? SB: Kandinsky is one of my most favorite artists. I was probably at the Guggenheim. I don’t know…
Short Fiction for Side A: “An Evening Jog by the Lake” by Stacey Lounsberry

An Evening Jog by the Lake A human man with the top of a taxidermized bison head, its breast of fur still fluffed like a winter scarf, pushes a baby stroller just ahead of me. Its wheels bump fist-sized rocks, jarring the carriage; the man’s knuckles flash white like a warning. He stops to watch…
Fiction for Side A: “Tell me how it tastes” by Arielle M. DeVito

Tell me how it tastes Mia’s dead ex-wife turns up in the middle of the night, dripping. She’s soggy with the smell of the lakebed and gets stinking mud all over the mat. Mia doesn’t know what to do with her, but she runs a bath that’s probably too hot and sits with her back…
Side A Poetry: “The Strategy of Tension” by Christopher Blackman

The Strategy of Tension At a bar, lobsters millin the corner claw machine,waiting to be pulledfrom their situation,from brine into boilfilling the room with the smellof displaced sea, pluckedfrom bedrooms to be usedin amusements, consumedby men in cargo shorts.Not to quote Dostoevsky,but this might be our greatest sin:destroying and betraying ourselvesfor nothing. Friends,I don’t need…
Side A Fiction: “Stoneware” by Katie Coleman

Stoneware We were packing boxes in the kitchen after a nice day: chimichangas, supermarket beer, loving talk. I thought I might as well pack the lobster bowls with the bedding, because we’d be inviting teachers for dinner in Thailand. My boyfriend’s certain to make a good teaching assistant. That picture of him in his camp…
Poetry for Side A: “Militia Lands Hunger” by Jonathan Memmert

Militia Lands Hunger they’re out there— they wait for the likes of youliberal likes they so dislikelikes so unlike them they meet train drill exercisein quasi synchronized precisionas onslaught takeover practices fantasize they dress in para uniform camouflage guisesbare tattooed ideology from under their skinstand sentry cocked and locked as white rise political voices sound…
Fiction for Side A: “Dancer” by Joel Henry Little

Dancer Some days when I’m on all fours and the corporate ladder-climbers on retreat are flogging me with their big foam swords, I watch the LEDs halo around the nearest bald head through the honeycomb eyeholes of my wolf costume reeking of weed and piss and I try to make a desert sunset in my…