Online Issues
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World Made Flesh, and Some Nights, It Gets So Dark
by Brent Canle
art: "Solaris" by Juan José Clemente
World Made Flesh
We woke this morning to find that the world was made of flesh. Skin covered everything. Freckles stained the sidewalk. Cars weave between pores in the road. The skyscraper’s windows were the milky membrane of blind eyes.
In the buildings, at work, we entered veins and all day rushed around into different orifices having meetings, completing tasks, meeting deadlines. The streets below us pulsed as buses exhaled into the coming night air.
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Museum of Falls
By Helen Laser
art by Helen Laser
Whoever thought to call autumn “crisp” deserves the Nobel Prize.
Imagine winning an award for a single word.
Imagine committing such an act of occult evocation that your body flies to Sweden
where there are umbels of apples
shrouded in blonde maple leaves
sequestered by hollow gourds:
their seeds rattling inside like a birthday party for a balloon child. -
Personal History of the Cherry Bomb
by Bart Plantenga
photo: collection of the author
You and I cannot believe our eyes anymore. Observe: A man on a glimmering stretch of walk in a tight, shiny suit, the kind start-up guys wear, was jimmying the lock on my bike with what could have been a hunting knife.
“HEY!” Startled, he pivoted and dashed off. I gave chase because I’d been reassured by characters seen in crime dramas that chase scenes usually end with their man in cuffs.
He was young, so it surprised me to be gaining on him so quickly.
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“All The Fighting Parts” an interview with Hannah V. Sawyerr (poetry ’22) and an excerpt from her debut YA novel
Interview by Jonathan Kesh
All The Fighting Parts, the debut novel in verse from Hannah V. Sawyerr, is a challenging, poetic tale about overcoming trauma and learning to fight back.
The story follows high-schooler Amina Conteh as she struggles to navigate a tightly-knit community centered entirely around the charismatic Pastor Johnson, who runs the Holy Tabernacle church. When the pastor attacks Amina one night at the church, she finds herself isolated, no longer sure of how to use her voice and unable to connect with her loved ones within Pastor Johnson’s orbit.
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Morning Sex
By Eileen G’Sell
photo by Marlene Leppänen on Pexels
I didn’t hear you say Charles De Gaulle and thought you meant the mayor.
It’s true I held your hand like a man. Your fridge, clean as alien
spacecraft, makes me want to mess your mattress. Lie back now while I
pretend to be appalled at the things you think about saying. I love that you
love the name “Lina Bembe”. -
Memories of Drinks Past
by Michael Cannistraci
It was 1979 in Los Angeles. I was twenty-two, struggling as an actor, and struggling in general. My dreams of stardom had fizzled after graduation from college; aside from taking expensive acting classes, I wasn’t performing anywhere.
I got a job going door to door, recruiting men for a government vasectomy study. The work was easy, but the pay was lousy, and I had to buy my own gas. My girlfriend suggested I try bartending to make a living after she observed a bartender in a funky, dive surfer bar in Venice Beach counting a wad of cash on one of our dates.
