By Chris Keyser There was no time for basking in it.  Perks Cafe couldn’t endure Ken Stagman for long before oscillating into hysteria.  And he knew it.  They knew it too.  A single iphone camera’s shutter flash would dash the…

By: Joseph Hope Epistle for the dead and Lost 1How dead is dead?When fishing for the impossible, How much hope is enough? How things die?They begin from Genesis, From the swinging cradle 2The morale from the long walkThrough this unvegetated…

By Sandra Ding During most daily commutes, one only sees strangers and doesn’t look closely. On an early evening in October, while the city dwelled in a soft, yellow haze, amid the bustle of the streets filled with the shuttling…

By: E.R. LeVar An old bonnet of hers still rests on a hook on the wall, long blue ribbons trailing down to the floor. A well-worn shawl drapes over the back of the chair, holes in the knitting letting the…

By Kristen Henderson      Carlos discovered an open box of D-con rat poison under a pile of shoes in the back of his grandmother’s closet.  He’d been called home from ‘Nam after his grandmother was found dead, rigid, straight as…

By: Alan Berger What stories to chooseWhich ones to tellThey choose youAnd tell you what to sellI’d rather be a year too earlyThen a second too lateRather not be out with someoneThat I just can’t takeRather stay home and masturbateAnd…

By: Francine Witte “So, let’s review,” says Man 1 “Right,” says Man 2, “we kill her at noon.” They lean over the high lip of the bridge rail. Straight down to the blue of the stream. “Not kill,” says Man…

By: Francine Witte There is suddenly no weather. Rain dries up before it falls and wind is all puffed out. “It’s a show of respect,” the anchor man says, and his lovely co-host agrees. The sun is gone, too, leaving…

By: Robin Long cling to the submitted words, disfigured,like the leather face of plaguewith spices shoved into a protruding beak herbs, to protect and stave off stenchpestilencenoxiousdisease—writing?it never felt like my disease, before only a dressing of another wound. Those…

By: Zach Murphy Sierra liked to eat ice cream during blizzards. She’d make snow angels and draw funny faces on them. In the Spring, she liked to bask in the grass for hours and hours, as if the insects were…