Issue #1
Bird by Kim Chinquee

I am early, sitting in bird’s-eye of the bakery, reading my book outside at a table. It’s a good book, with language I appreciate, and the plot moves along.

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In the Shape of by Matthew Fogarty

That day it was cloudy and there was a grinding noise of gears coming off the clouds muscling into and out of each other, gears like on a car or a freight train but like they’d been winter-rusted.

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Vapid by Cooper Renner

Sure, it looked like there were grapes in his jeans. No doubt. This was his fantasy: she’d come and peel him out of his shell, not even say please.

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Vladimir and Estragon by Natalia Rachel Singer

He thought we were only company men, loyal but a little dim-witted, the kind of guys who pass the time making simple observations like “Look, a tree,” and “Yeah, that fat guy is really eating a whole chicken and throwing the bones right on the ground.”

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Dive by Tom Hazuka

I’m back by the pool table in Shank’s, a dive on the wrong side of downtown, trying not to yawn or stare at the chest of a girl in a tight T-shirt babbling about her ex-boyfriend. Suddenly glass shatters, louder than “Freebird” wailing on the jukebox.

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Gallows Pole by Kathy Hoyle

In the dead of summer, while the whiptails hide in sagebrush shadows, and everything blisters in the amber heat and there ain’t nothin but buzzards hummin for miles around, a hanged man dances on a gallows pole.

Pet Shop Boys by Tim Craig

Dayne’s on-off-off-on stepdad, Kel, says stay away from that new pet shop.

After by Claudia Monpere

and after and after and nothing changes, just the names of the children. This one drew birds wearing hats. That one had an orange juice popsicle for an imaginary friend.

Carry On by Lucinda Kempe

Once there was a man who loved his donkey, but his donkey didn’t love him back. The donkey loved an eggshell, but the eggshell didn’t love it back.

Prudence by Christy Stillwell

They put the shock collar on the boy and that was it for the nanny. First they put the collar on one another. They were professors in English and Philosophy, all of them smart people.