Sasha Tandlich She attacks the shirt with a dull pair of scissors. These are the same scissors she uses for everything: opening packages, cutting green onions, trimming her bangs, holding against her...
Debbie Bateman This is not the first time Pauline’s tried to escape. At seventeen, she ran from her father, taking only what fit in the beat-up Dodge she’d paid for with her own cash. Her clothes...
Isabella Welch It was Sunday night, which, since childhood, was a night of painful malaise for Jon. It started in the morning this time, that tugging. Here you are, old, unwelcome friend, Jon...
Fiction North of Wilshire by ISABELLA WELCH Conscience Round by BRENDAN EGAN Secret Workings by DEBBIE BATEMAN Thin Apocalypse by OLIVIA TREYNOR The Cult of the Greater Tuberosity by SASHA TANDLICH...
Lena Crown On my dining room window, there’s a paint smudge at the center of the third pane of glass. Before quarantining for eight months, before gazing out that window each day at the same thin...
Millie Tullis Mary Jo Amani’s ecstatic poem “Rapture” remained with me long after my initial reading. I was so grateful to be able to share this powerful poem with our readers in issue 49.2....
By Melissa Wade I stare at the rain pouring down from the clogged gutters outside my window, realizing I have yet to talk to another human today. I asked my dog if he wanted to go for a walk, but it...
Alyssa Quinn In the doctor’s office, a woman describes the shape of her pain. “There is a hard pillar inside of me,” she says. “Cylindrical. Metallic. It stretches from the pit of my...
Erica Plouffe Lazure I am a known heretic in these parts because I mow the lawn on Sundays. I can feel my neighbor’s eyes on my back on the Lord’s Day as I maneuver through my special, signature...
By Sarah Wilson Recently, I was able to speak with Kelli Taylor, co-founder of the Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop. Beginning in 2002, the group began its work with youth convicted as...
