Online Issues
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Early Bird
art by Jacelyn Yap
by Cameron MacKenzie
When we were pregnant with our first child, my ex-wife and I began to dig back into our family history in the hopes of clarifying the medical record. How prevalent were cancers and which ones were manifest? Who died of heart disease or a blood disorder? Were there any birth defects?
It was a strange process for many reasons, but it principally led me to think, for the first time in a long time, about my uncle. He had what is now called cerebral palsy but,
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Apples in the Garden
art by Jacelyn Yap
by Jo Galvv
A Magnetic Kiss, A Jawquake Headline, and the End of PossibilityI stood under the pulsing strobes of the year’s largest LGBT party—a labyrinthine
industrial maze, spanning three floors that vibrated with frenetic energy. I had dragged along
a reluctant fellow student, the only one willing to venture into the scene with me. The crowd
crackled with elation; each nook teemed with strangers in their universes. I couldn’t shake the
hollow ache for connection.We approached a pair,
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Hello, Goodbye, Hello
art by Thomas Vogt
by Adam Peterson
That the dream of the new world was another’s nightmare—
We were taught not to worry too much about that, and now it’s our nightmare.
People arrive on our shores from across the ocean. They plant flags in our malls and rename our restaurants like they discovered them. But we did! And we told all of our friends smugly about them as if they should have already known.
What a strange new world this is,
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Snowblind
art by Jacelyn Yap
by Mar Koren
The line for the Reading Station stretched three blocks, and rain dripped from the awnings in a constant tempo.
Marion fiddled with his watch impatiently, as the woman in front of him berated her child.
“I don’t know, Jack,” she said for the fourth time, grabbing the child’s shoulder to pull him more evenly into line.
Stop trying to reason with him, Marion thought, shifting from foot to foot because his Converse sneakers had soaked through.
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Blue Tulips
art by Jacelyn Yap
by Abigail Beliles
“Sydney?” Jamie’s voice resonated throughout the empty house.
He bit his lip as he pondered how much longer it would be before she would get home. He knew he had to apologize for what happened that morning, but she hadn’t answered her calls all day. He ignored the tracks from his muddied tennis shoes as he rushed toward the kitchen.
Her key fob was missing from the rack above the back door. The grease-stained dishes lay scattered in the sink.
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Johnny Appleseed
art by Jacelyn Yap
by Katie Harms
Johnny grew up in a tin can trailer with a father who wasn’t a preacher. But his father still preached, and he drove a van hand-painted with God’s Greatest Miracle, the unborn fetus. Johnny was tall and wiry, and his skin was bad—red all over in these great rough patches that peeled away from themselves as if the skin itself didn’t belong on his tired and stretched-out body. And maybe it didn’t; it itched and broke and across his cheeks beneath his eyes were pustules that should’ve been freckles.
