Issue 42
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Land of Abundant Language
art by JJ Cromer
by Jose Hernandez Diaz
A man in a “Deltron 3030” shirt fell from his skateboard into a graffitied sewer world. The obscure world was in another universe. The name of the obscure planet was called “The Land of Abundant Language.” There were unusual, sentient beings on this planet. They were roughly 8 ft tall, with sleek bodies in the shape of star fish, red orange in color. They spoke a formal English, somehow, and always used ornate language, but not necessarily in a pretentious manner, they just seemed to sincerely enjoy expression and the adequate elaboration of emotion.
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How to Live
art by the author
by Helen Hofling
I subscribed to all the lifestyle magazines for advice on how to live. They have many useful tips, like wearing shearling to cultivate a Nordic sense of warmth, and contentment. I can’t afford shearling, but I fill up my browser tabs with aspirations. The magazines reveal secret regimens for a lustrous shell. They diagram which postures will help me stay happy and which postures will help me grow thin. They tell me the right kind of tealeaves to buy. They tell me how to read them.
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Ekphrastic I
art by the author
by Cait McCann
Speech is a powerful lord, who with the finest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works: it can stop fear and banish grief and create joy and nurture pity.
-Gorgias, Encomium of Helen
Ekphrastic I
Where do I get off, comparing myself to her like that? My forehead is tied to my toes. When I make my body concave it is only an attempt to ease tension between two.
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Thrust Fault
art by Richard Hanus
by Sharon K. McClain
The front-door frame is supposed to be the strongest in the house, so you squeeze into that rectangle while your siblings spill onto the front porch, vertiginous from tumulted terrain. It’s years before the public safety chant of “Drop, Cover, and Hold On.” Forty-seven miles away, tectonic compression detonates, aggravating a previously unknown fault, forcing mountains six feet upward, buckling roads and freeways. Disfiguring the landscape.
Your stepfather, Bob, roars that this is “The Big One.” Vindication wild in his navy blue eyes.
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Raft
art by Cynthia Yachtman
by Terry Engel
My wife Shelley texts: “I’m going to a vigil for New Year’s Eve. It’s mostly singing readings quiet reflection peaceful. You’d really enjoy it.”
I’m paddling a kayak on the Forked Deer River a few miles away. The people in this part of Arkansas pronounce “Forked” with two syllables. The watershed drains a hundred square miles, most of it wetland, more lake than river, more swamp than lake. On the map the Forked Deer looks like the lateral veins of a leaf extending from the edges to the central vein,
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I Double Dare You
art by JJ Cromer
by Laura Shaine Cunningham
I invested my 8-year-old friend, the wild child of our slum neighborhood, with the power to save me…and perhaps she did
I assumed she had died long ago or, as the awful expression goes, was “as good as dead.” The last time I saw Diana, she was eight years old, sitting on the stoop of her apartment building on the mean streets of the South Bronx. She was smoking and dealing cards to a group of older boys.
