Cody Shrum ZENITH Four of them were out that night: two brothers and a couple. They’d been howling at the moon, driving around, being kids—senior year, winter break. Wattles Road was just outside town, nobody around to bother them. The…
Clara Bush Vadala PARTHENOGENESIS Sonnet Crown for Anna the anaconda from Boston’s New England Aquarium, 2019 Her unborn litter will find it very hard to come undone because their mother did not for anyone either. When she heard indecence she…
Elizabeth Brus LINA AND NINA When I sucked on Tiana, pulling the skin up in my mouth like Fiona told me you do it, it left a mark that was darker than even her skin was, black against brown like…
Cecile Callan HOME AWAY FROM HOME Into the sleek metal shaker went the whiskey, Frangelico, white crème de cacao, heavy cream. The bartender reached for an egg—crack—and slid the yellow orb from shell to shell as the white jiggled slithery…
Ellie J. Anderson ENSENADA Teri and Hal drove past the leaning cardboard shacks of Tijuana to a large old hotel at Estero Beach. They’d been separated for eight months and Hal had been living with a woman named Marilyn. He…
Robert Nazar Arjoyan DRUNK IN THE GRAVEYARD Jesus Christ ticked off each push-up while Neil Young sang about a man and a maid. Raffi’s hands reddened with strain and weight, flushing redder in a slant shaft of summer sun. The…
David Jack SparksDINNER IS AT SEVEN-THIRTY She opens the apartment door and frowns a smile at him, looks him up and down, holding onto the edge of the door as if she hasn’t yet decided whether to let him in.…
Micah Muldowney CONFESSIONS It is a full moon tonight, but she has yet to clear the colinas of Salina Cruz. She might not crest at all; they are high and stark, almost walls, and the valley is very thin, almost…
Zachariah Claypole White OCD SONNET #3 Sonnet enough of poetry—i want only honesty between us how once for cbt i had to call my mother a bitch it’s almost funny now—her delight i mean when finally i did—or the video…
Maya Salameh MUSIC TO DROWN BY Shape Poem do you understand? you speak & the sun spills out. this is how a computer is made: an ocean meets a relic in a midsize city. their story becomes innards which become…
Penny Johnson LOCKDOWN Pantoum Four days until they shamble back to school. Even the lithe dreamers, penchant for subordinate clause, nominative absolute steel edged and burly boys who pin each other, thud of flesh to mat in calculation of atomic…
Honorable Mention, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition Geoffrey Billetter GORGON SON Geoffrey Billetter is a Chicago poet and prose writer. He writes autobiography into images that reveal multiple systems of reading and reference, often in conversation with the South and…
First Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition I love Weijia Pan’s contemporary approach to the Sapphic stanza—a lyric poetic form created by the Greek poet Sappho, from her home on the island of Lesbos. Here, each five-line fragment represents the…
Jeff Pearson ENGAGEMENT CORONA “The mouth of weeds marriage.” She shivered. “It’s—it’s a death!” –John Ashbery, “Idaho” Absence holds rings on our fingers, bright, until each ring’s syntax is muted with flash flood weather steaming the windows, plies of books…
Third Prize, Form & Form-Breaking Poetry Competition In “grindr villanelle,” Matt Broomfield creates the unlikely hook-up between the queer dating app Grindr and an unruly version of the challenging, delicate, French-derived villanelle form. Broomfield also marries contemporary language and experience…
A Writing Tip from Micah MuldowneyPACHELBEL’S CONUNDRUM Before I was a writer, I was a musician. I’d only just begun when they let me in on their dirty little secret: Most songs are just three chords. Some are just two.…
Jessica KlimeshAn Interview with Kathryn Kulpa, author of COOKING TIPS FOR THE DEMON-HAUNTED I recently had the delightful opportunity to interview Kathryn Kulpa about her latest chapbook Cooking Tips for the Demon-Haunted, winner of the 2022 New Rivers Press Chapbook…
A Writing tip from Moriah HamptonHair Splinters: Listen Before You Write Writing is about relationships—relationships we cultivate with ourselves, and our readers, subjects, and communities. To have good relationships, it’s important to listen. A conversation I had with my friend…
A Novel by Max Porter, reviewed by Alex BehmSHY (Graywolf Press) Max Porter, previously nominated for the Man Booker Prize among other awards, has just published a fourth novel, Shy. The title character, Shy, is an adolescent enrolled at Last…
Simona ZaretskyAN INTERVIEW WITH RUTH MADIEVSKY, AUTHOR OF ALL-NIGHT PHARMACY Ruth Madievsky’s novel, All-Night Pharmacy from (Penguin Random House, 2023) is a gorgeous and dark exploration of sisterhood, sexuality, and traumas inherited and experienced. The unnamed narrator struggles with addiction…
Andrea Caswell Speaks with Brendan StephensTITLES, FIRST SENTENCES, AND HOW “HELL’S MOUNTAIN” CHANGED In the story “Hell’s Mountain” by Brendan Stephens (Issue 42), readers are invited into the Underworld with a narrator who must scale a looming mountain to discover…
A Collection by Cleo QianLET’S GO LET’S GO LET’S GO (Tin House Books) Cleaver’s internship program offers the opportunity to review a new book from a small or indie press under the mentorship of a senior editor. We loved how…
A Writing Tip from Jessica KlimeshWRITE LESS, READ MORE As writers, we’re often told that we should be writing every day (or, at least, regularly), that we shouldn’t just wait for the muse to strike. But writing doesn’t have to mean just writing.…
Kelly DuMar MYSTERY, MISCARRIAGE & MENDING: How Epistolary Erasure Poetry Threads Old Letters with New Narratives We crave it, but we never get the whole story about our family of origin. How our parents came to create us––so much remains a…
A Writing Prompt from Janet BurrowayDISASTER STRIKES There has been a disaster and you must leave your home. You may choose one object to take with you, and only one. What will you take? You arrive at a border, where…
Andrea CaswellRIFFS ON REVISION Most of the work of writing is rewriting. No one wants to hear this! We thrive on that rush of creativity and sense of possibility inherent in a first draft. After our initial inspiration and abandon…
Scott HurdNavigating Back: Stargazing and the Threat of AI As I contemplate a changing creative landscape since the unleashing of generative AI, I can’t help but think back to grade school math. I had the coolest compass in class. All…
Beth KephartBE INSPIRED I know. I know. So grotesquely obvious. Except for the essential sequitur: Be inspired by what? The metronome flick of your puppy’s tail? The mellifluous hum of the antique AC? The letter m, lowercase, written, for the…
Ky LohrenzCONTAINMENT FAILURE At the party, I watch drunk men piss in a sink & all I see is freedom. How’d I get here— eyeing their semis, feigning indifference, waiting for the rain to stop. Tell me how it feels.…
Samantha PadgettAN UNNAMED ESSAY IN WHICH THE WORLD ENDS, BUT I’M TOLD EVERYTHING IS OKAY My mother is panicking. I know this despite her insistence that she isn’t afraid. After days of listening to the newscaster detail the refrigerator trucks…
J. Bradley MinnickTHE BANKRUPT CIRCUS Before the Bankrupt Circus came to town, my bud, Decie, and I spent our summer lunch breaks arguing about the merits of olive loaf sandwiches while we sat on the curb in the midst of…
Lynn FingerIT NEVER SEEMED WRONG TO LOVE YOU, IT’S JUST THAT WE WERE HERONS It never seemed wrong to love you, but I think we knew it wasn’t a fit. Still, we pitch a rocky tent in the sugar pines…
Carolyn AlessioCONTRAINDICATED My mother once found opiates in the bottom of a used necklace box. She’d heard a clicking sound while lifting out the gold-plated necklace she had just purchased at a dying mall near her home. A half-dozen pills…
Mikki AronoffLIFT It’s our birthday month, leaves relinquishing their hold, and I’m thinking back to that rodeo, both of us burning for cowboys and leather, unaware of the suffering of cows, and afterwards, you climbed then tumbled into the bullpen,…
Rebecca Grossman-KahnWHEN YOU CALL HIS MOTHER FROM THE PSYCH UNIT When you call his mother, give yourself time. A half hour, at least. Give up on the idea of beating rush hour traffic home. Swipe your badge and enter through…
Sarah MyersTHE RIDE You’re buying tampons, brushing your hair, cleaning the crud off the kitchen table, and the sight of your own stupid fingers reminds you that the bottom has dropped out of everything. Then you’re talking to a colleague…
Jennifer PopaRE-MARK THE BODY, BUT KNOW IT IS LITTLE MORE THAN KINDLING When I wake, my moles are retreating across my drool-stained pillow, into my sheets and the afghan tangled around my ankles. Last week my ears began ticking, keeping…
Tom SokolowskiSUNK BY MINES Driving to Cascades Park, I pass The Florida Bar and the Smokey Hollow Commemoration and Community Garden where, on a bench facing Franklin Boulevard, Lonely Man, with a knapsack beside him, is always grinding rotten kumquats…
Matthew BurrellFIVE SECONDS J.D. stood up without his grenade pin. We were heading toward the Guadalupe range after a live fire exercise in White Sands Training Grounds, otherwise known as the ‘Sand Box’, during a hot afternoon in July 1998…
Leonard KressCOLLOQUY OF YOUNG MOTHERS ON VENANGO STREET By one a.m. they hoard the crossroad stoops, spotlit by squealing cars and vans, each beam gilding an icon nimbus in mounting loops of hair. They gaze impassive at the stream of…
Emily SteinbergGLASS HOUSE A Visual Narrative Emily Steinberg is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on painting and visual narrative. Her work has been published by The New Yorker and included in several anthologies. Steinberg teaches visual narrative at Penn…
Jody M KeeneOUR HANDS TOO SMALL We come home for Thanksgiving to watch our mom die. We get there to find the blinds drawn and the fridge empty except for cans of Ensure and Kraft singles. “We’re going to order…
Laura RubyAMONG THE WRECKAGE 1. Earth after the asteroid strikes, leaving the Chicxulub crater twelve miles deep. 2. The dinosaurs, after the fallout dusts them off the map. 3. A mammoth sinking in the La Brea Tar Pit. 4. Neanderthals.…
Pat RyanTHE ACTIVIST IN THE NURSING HOME It was Monday morning, a few minutes shy of noon, when I entered the Visitors’ Room of the extended care facility where I was embedded. The room is square and high-ceilinged, with a…
Grayson Thompsonjuniper poplar I knew a guy who lost over 100 lbs by running away from himself he taught me to start small like a building and eventually turn the world over with my feet the first block felt like…
Brendan StephensHELL’S MOUNTAIN Long ago, after I died, I found myself alone in a vast wasteland with nothing on the horizon except a single imposing mountain gray with distance. This wasn’t paradise. I’d never been a believer, just an ordinary…
Jon ChopanAN EXAMINATION OF THE TEXT AS IT PERTAINS TO THE DIVORCE AND SUBSEQUENT ROMANCE BETWEEN CHARACTERS XX AND XY Rabid ……….Which is the only way to describe XY’s love, even now, when XX is gone, when she is off…
Andrew Michael JohnsonDUNES DAY In the summer of 2020 we fled the confinements of our house in Kansas City and drove to Colorado. After the first three months of pandemic lockdown, my wife, three young children, and I needed to…
Lauren BakerYOUR BEST IMPRESSION OF AN EARNEST MAN There was a Post-it with a heart drawn on it stuck to my desktop computer. I folded the paper square into halves, fourths, and eighths and scratched at the residue it left…
Gillian PerrySOMATICS It had been a month since my miscarriage, two weeks since I decided to take my maternity leave anyway. I justify it like this—I’m not leaving the office for maternity, maternity had left me instead. Davis leaves for…