Issue #7
Hero by Tom Whalen

Every hero the writer must approach only approximately. The eyes, for example, must resemble Roman candles, like the eyes of the actors in Wilhelm Meister arriving at night in freight wagons before the castle of a count, as noted in Jean Paul’s School for Aesthetics.

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Strip Poker & Dybbuk by Jeff Friedman

My lover shuffles the deck, fanning the cards into a bridge. The cards arc like a rainbow, then fly wildly through the air like fish hurling out of the water into the mouths of bottled-nosed dolphins that leap to catch them in their hungry mouths.

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Kappa by Matthew Minicucci

It’s raining again, you say. Near flow and no-slip. Car on the curvature of space and time and boxed wine. Here: the clear empty well of a disappointed glance.

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Holiday Inn by Kathleen Nalley

After the bruised body recovered, after being shoved

into a car, after the knot in the temple subsided after

a platter of fried chicken smashed into her head, her

mamma took her girls to the Holiday Inn and hid.

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Five Prose Poems by Denise Duhamel

Once upon a time there was elaborate plumbing, then people started shitting in
the woods again. Once we worshipped goddesses who bore children—now we
want mothers back to work in twelve weeks.

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Suite X by Amy Breau

I was prepared to answer the first question, have you ever wanted to kill someone?


But it completely threw me off when they asked, have you ever wanted to keep


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Get Your Authentic Stardust Here by JP Relph

The night the sky cracked, I was sprawled on the hood of my car beside that good-for-nothing boy, naming constellations, ignoring his fingers on my neck.

The Storyteller of Aleppo by Donna Obeid

In the barren cold camp, you wear a dusty cape and top hat, wave my cane as if it were a wand and tell me your dream-stories, one after the next, your words spun and tossed like tethers into the air.

Amelia Earhart Knew Seven Latin Words for Fire by Joe Kapitan

Ignis, the flaming wreckage, bubbling rubber, liquified cloth, her skin charred and blistering, acrid smoke, the tiny thunders of survival’s kicks

Electric Storm by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris

It’s been twenty minutes since the first bolt of lightning ripped a scar through the purple night sky. Since my mother said to swim in the rain ― it’s fun. Since her boyfriend Colin said he’d join us― to check we’re ok.

Bog Iron by Shane Larkin

We make stops on the way to our bog plot to look at the little skeletons. Dad tells me about them. Curlews and skylarks in dancing poses. Tiny skulls.