Online Issues
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Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie…
by Kevin Grauke
Photo by specphotops on Unsplash
This story isn’t mine to tell, but here I am telling it, and without even the courtesy of asking her permission. To dilute my guilt, I think of a mother’s blood, how it continues to pulse through the chambers of her child’s heart long after the umbilical cord, thick as a beefy thumb, has been severed. And since this is true of blood, maybe it’s true of stories, too, since nothing seems more vital within us than the stories we’ve absorbed from those whose blood courses through us.
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Jerusalem Ostraca
by Isaac James Richards
Photo courtesy of the Author
I visited my grandpa’s grave again yesterday. Easter Sunday. I cannot think of him without thinking of Jerusalem. How the two have fused in my memory. It’s been four years.
I was in Jerusalem on a research trip when the pandemic hit. My institution demanded that I return immediately, more than a month early. When I got on the plane and slipped into my seat, there was a quote floating on the screen in front of me.
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Writing Off Your Ex
By Jan Karlo Lopez
photo by Jeylan Jones
It’s your movie, write off whom you want. Tell everyone, including yourself, that they died. Anyone who asks understands because ironically the only guidance given on a breakup is to not speak on the break-up. Your friend that’s fucking their ex will implore you not to fuck yours. Your friend who drunk dials their ex will suggest you block their number. Your friend who cheats will pray you find someone new and settle down like they did. Your friend that’s a bigger piece of shit than you will beg you to forget about your ex while they try to fuck them behind your back.
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The Experience Thieves
by Thomas Benz
Kawakami Sumio, Ginza, 1929
The Larkins were not splashy people. You wouldn’t find their photograph in a slick magazine featuring charity balls, nor would their obituaries be filled with public triumphs. Yet they were in that unfortunate category of people who were average with above average yearnings. It wasn’t so much that they envied the rich, or anyone else with the privileges of exclusive membership, as they were curious, wanting every now and then a taste of the extraordinary, a peek through a gap in the carnival tent,
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Among Rooms and Other Arrangements
by Nathaniel Eddy
unknown (late 1700s-early 1800s)
Mitchell appeared at my door like one of those summer storms that blows in swift, unexpected. Dark clothing, hair like a blanket of slanting rainfall. I had taken the day to stay home and practice self-care which meant I’d remained in bed looking at the internet. News headlines and social media feeds, articles about moon bathing, intentionality, the endless therapy memes. I had been watching a video about breathing techniques when Mitchell knocked and told me that Francine had asked him to leave. He said this in the way of someone under anesthesia: thick,
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Pocket God
by T.J. Martinson
art by Odilon Redon, 1882
Your Pocket God stopped eating last week. For the first few days, it was easy enough to excuse the way it pushed away each offering of raisins like a fussy toddler, but now, eight days later, excuses are hard to come by. Still you try.
“It’s probably just a spiritual fast,” you tell your dad during breakfast as you anxiously hold your starving, gaunt Pocket God, watching it turn over weakly in your palm.
You hope your father will agree that there’s nothing to worry about,
