by MATTHEW CHELF I used to think the soul of each and every person washes up on the shores of the Oregon Coast in the form of a piece of driftwood. Gnarled like dragon jaws, twisted in tormented straights, narrow as a bone and forking into fantastic tendrils at the end, the shape all depended […]

Read More Love and Agony

by Markham Sigler As we approached the small grove I realized for the first time that I didn’t know the young man who accompanied me. He was short and had wide shoulders, and he wore a buzzcut. I thought about speaking, stirring the pot of our union. Maybe I should pause before the lime pool […]

Read More The Fourth Member

by S.T. Brant Darker than ever it’s ever been. The dark. I saw it seeing. I saw it seeing in its jaws, jaws of eyes My blood fall to mud, I saw. Bones the leaves. The Aeolian blood, the past. Voyaging with Fortune overboard the ship of dark, a swirl around this high blood. The […]

Read More Abandonded

by GREGG WILLIARD The night he saw her again was an outdoor performance of the aerial ballet in the park. Single-point trapeze artists in ropes and bungees swung from trees lit to neon filigree. In the crowd, the woman from the past balanced on one leg while scratching the back of her calf with the […]

Read More The Night and the Show

by GWIL JAMES THOMAS As the moon continues to shine, the wine is drained from the cup, Porphyria shaves her head, deconstructing my words like the removal of tongues and barnacles discussing secrets heard from a black box. Meanwhile, the furniture in this room asks, What happened to the one who got away? What tomorrow might bring? Yet, […]

Read More Eosophobia

by HOWIE GOOD My mother went into the hospital for heart surgery and never came out. Afterwards, my father tried to kill himself three times. The last time the lights in the house went “Pop!” I was about to turn nine. I remember because I had just won an award at school for most improved […]

Read More Death Trains

by RICKY GARNI was in the country side of Culver City pretending to be Bavaria . And this postman who mounted a horse there narrowly escaped the laughing peasant girl . as she chased him ‘round & ‘round longing to steal the lazy little flower from his silky lapel Ricky Garni lives in suburban North Carolina […]

Read More The Bride Wore Red

by Iván Brave And Ilya knew by now what was happening, three artists who had borrowed from one another fought on center stage for the iron heart of the audience tossed there for only one to grab. But none would win. Bon Iver wrestled James Blake who hog tied Sam Smith who himself locked the first […]

Read More The Drop

by MICHAEL GRANT SMITH Uncle hid treats inside his farmhouse and sun-drunk garden. We’d search behind undusted collections of books or in the gaps between bricks, or underneath wobbly paving stones. Coins and hard candy at first; each New Year’s Day we found ever-higher denominations of folded currency. Other times he’d leave us apple peels, […]

Read More Short Division