Issue 17
A shattering silence. And then the crude language of machines. Lying on the table I am flat as the table. I am lying. The body…
Open bellows bloom birch beams. Pump cottonwood stain, spin linen slips, varnish raffia. Mill walnut planks, cedar shiplap. Shake the soffit, prime the doors. Sheath…
In the fourth year of the drought, Boyd built a rain barrel. She was technically a senior in high school, but she was homeschooled, as…
It’s ridiculous. Alice rummages in her bag and extracts a Marlboro while she steers with one hand. Well, that’s one word for it. It’s actually…
and I am half-scuffed with grief a red diamond on a red ground drop of condensation from the brandy glass my mother would give me…
Of leftover things. Of the place the bus used to stop on the corner, here, before the express route and how, dry or no, we…
I am standing in line at the French Broad Chocolate Lounge in Asheville, North Carolina, a place as exotic as it sounds. It is late…
Last week a pair of oversexed tree frogs oozed a huge jelly ball of eggs on a branch of the young pine too tall for…
At the lake, the water is still. It doesn’t retreat as we do. Here, I learned how to bury the dead within myself. You scattered…
By the time she finally made it to The Lazy Eye there were a good half-dozen cars in the parking lot, all of them crowded…
For years, our Moon spins away from us in inches, as if to slip out of orbit, unnoticed. We can’t have that— who would we…
Night Train ignored the squeeze of his wrestling mask by thinking of how badly he wanted to beat up Magic. The silver mask, adorned with…
All year, vacation houses goose their skirts up housewife legs, their stilts a tiptoed recoil from the ocean edging toward them like disgrace. These homes,…
A plague of crickets or an endless game of Yahtzee. Neon rainstorms and rat-pack martinis. Tin-foil hats and moon landings. She knows the game: you…