Children of the Desert

by Emily Browne gather to see the bones that spell out met-a-mor-pho-sis vertebrae drifting in single file stars one hundred and two feet down strewn across the bottom of a dried-up well the blonde boy without history names dead stars in the order of their collapse what songs there are are of deserts sand wind

Do You Like Coffee?

by Carla Botha It always starts like this: with coffee somewhere —               coffee shops               coffee trucks               ice coffee               on breezy summer days               on lush lawns               hot July days it always starts like this it never ends like this. Carla BothaCarla Botha completed her MFA in creative writing at New York University. She currently lives and works

Bisecting Paths

by Madeleine Beckman I was at the Mudd Club you were too                   probably watching or with another young artist high (most of us were) on something potent          but not as potent as youth. I was probably dancing (what I did back then). Music was my drug, movement my master – every muscle, tendon taut, tantalized in

At the Casino with Two Jacks

by Jo-Anne Rosen           Though we’d known about each other over twenty years, we didn’t meet until that afternoon in the hospital when Alice burst into the room and dropped into the chair opposite mine. On the bed between us lay my husband, Frank. His jaw hung open and his breath was raspy.           “Why

Rotarian on Vacation

by Niles Reddick for Jerry and Ruth Ann Jimmy lived and breathed Rotary in Augusta, Georgia. That’s how he’d met his wife, Virginia. She was a Miss Georgia contestant, and once a year they paraded the young ladies through the club, partly to increase ticket sales to the beauty pageant among the wealthiest men in

The White Dread of Wilshire

by Gina Yates As I rinse my paintbrushes in the bathroom sink, I make a forlorn James Dean face in the mirror and try to recall when 3-day stubble became my signature look. Seriously though, at what point did I become so mired in angst that I succumbed to this half-assed grunge aesthetic? I don’t

Everyone Here is Fine

by Cynthia Allen I’m suddenly a housewife like my mother, procuring groceries at different markets, cleaning dog hair off the kitchen floor, and promptly serving dinner weeknights at 6:00 pm. At first, I welcome the busyness, but as three weeks roll into four and six and eight, my patience wears thin. I’m doing what my

Invitation to Dinner

by Clive Aaron Gill           In the spring of 2019, my good friend, Nicholas, texts me, Come to a cool party.           With cool women? I text back.           You’ll see.           I’m known as Jay. I share an apartment with a friend in Oceanside, California, and I’m twenty-eight years old. I have a long

Battery Boy

by Wayne Rapp I am the Director of Photography for a large Midwestern film and video production company, and how am I spending my time? Not that you’d have reason to know, but I’m redesigning the crew section of our budget forms. And this for the second time in the last quarter. I should have