Tag: vol. 2

Fiction: “A Texas” by Laura Ellen Scott

Bonnie & Jack Bonnie collects Jack from rehab. Fucking bougainvillea everywhere. “Thanks.” He slides into the passenger seat, tosses a half-empty duffel into the back of the white pickup and says, “Jesus.” He can’t believe it, the day, Bonnie, anything. He’s out. She can’t really bring herself to it. It’s east Texas, wet and hot.…
Fiction: Trent England’s “Patience Is the Most Passive Discipline”

The woman walking toward me is not the woman I last saw four years ago. My wife exits the airport terminal in fatigue pants and rubber sandals, her hair held back in a military bun. She wears a t-shirt with the phrase Present Without Pay written over it, and when I ask what the shirt…
Poetry: “A Slow Pickling” by Tara Boswell

a drowned and legless female {insert your animal here}how sweet watch her commitment to being a life raftno just a life vest c’mon you always wanted my hands around your neck right after I flip the kitchen tableupending everything we were preparing for breakfasttake notes one clove of garlic in each cheek take your medicine …
Fiction: Joe Baumann’s “A Paper House”

When we knock on your door only a week after your husband’s suicide, flashing our badges even though we don’t need to, telling you we’re here to check the walls for the girl’s body, the fact that you don’t even flinch makes us fall in love with you again. You step out of the way,…
Fiction: Jane Liddle’s “The Last List”

When she was born, her mom was on her back, in the hospital, confused and in a hazy pain, twilit spots scattered across her eyes. Her dad, in a different room in the same hospital, fiddled thumbs, paced to and fro, rocked back and forth, checked his watch and then checked the clock, and watched…
Fiction: Anne Valente’s “Like the Light of Blue Water”

The voices came again, drifting through brick walls, and Simon stopped typing once more, listened through the apartment’s silence. The third time today—at least the seventh time this week—and though he distinguished the steady undulations of two voices, one male, the other female, he could not tell where they were. Sometimes they seemed to be…
Three Poems by Jared Joseph

As She Added the Dirt to Her Beauty She added the alphabet to her Fabulous muscles I died there. Before that I was a ghost Now I am a ghost. The wounds don’t heal Does the skin break As she adds the dirt to her beauty She adds the eyes her body. As I died…
Poetry: Al Ortolani’s “Buddhists Call It Monkey Mind”

Take toothpaste for instance―white foam splatteredon the mirror, on the vanity,on the chrome faucet.Each time you spit,lather drips down your chin,runs the brush onto your hands;you can smell mintthe rest of the day on your fingertipsWhen you wokethat morning, you were justanother sap with halitosis;by noon, you’re a reformer.Purpose evokes response.You begin to petition.A man,…
Two Poems by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

Monster Dolls Baby monsters with their stuffed teddy bear monster dolls, like regular dolls, only horrific, wounded, dangerous; which baby monsters see as something to teethe and love, to protect and be protected by. Dozens of them, in the secret nursery hidden out back of the house. Lining the bottom of the bed to keep…