From the Editors
Dear Reader,
Phillip Mandel & Michaela Hansen
Does fact matter, if nobody knows it?
Poetry
Life is an Application
Christina Quintana
I would like to request a fee waiver for this application as I am (a) not rich and (b) not getting richer in the foreseeable future.
Fiction
When I Grow Up, I Want to be a Ghost
Casey Whitworth
At one point, my mother had a butcher’s knife and kept saying, ‘I swear to God I’ll do it!’
Review
A Bestiary
Lily Hoang
As the Chinese Zodiac moves through another twelve-year cycle, it is certain that further difficulties await.
Interview & Review
for all the other ghosts
A Book Review and Conversation with Justin Sanders
The ghosts of history still haunt the woods and alleys, bridges and country roads. One can glimpse the past stained on the flags and horses, fireflies and Nikes.
Nonfiction
Alphabet of Tiny
Janet Yoder
What is our responsibility to those who cannot afford the high cost of housing in our growing cities?
Nonfiction
A Space Between Us
Chloe Livaudais
I know that this lump could be very bad because my mother had been forced to separate herself from just such a badness…
Fiction
Melt
Marléne Zadig
Candy hated this young woman, who looked to be approximately the same age as she was.
Interview
Creativity, Emotion, & Memory
An Interview with Leigh Stein
…but when I was inside it, I saw no patterns.
Poetry
Stories Are This, Stories Are That
Mercedes Lawry
Expect the full-on drama to sweep in / with violins, even peril a frolic, / even danger a cause for flattery.
Fiction
The Illuminated Half
Natalia Castells-Esquivel
There were only a few things Freddy knew about his dad: 1. He was an asshole… 2. His name was Antonio. 3. He was good at baseball.
Review
The Transmigration of Bodies
A Review of Yuri Herrera’s The Transmigration of Bodies
Any silence is purely coincidental, okay?
Fiction
The End of the World
Michael Chin
It’s Independence Day and the birds are losing their minds.
Interview & Review
An Elegy Peeled Back
Wayne Miller – An Interview and Book Review
…the dead are only discoverable in pieces, as the sequence glides through scenes that call attention to how sorrow is aroused and housed in minute moments: “it’s good to remember: / butterflies / will sip blood from an open wound.”
Poetry
Sometimes I Worry About
Elizabeth O’Connell-Thompson
My doctor sees to it that I bleed every month
Interview
Strange Monsters
An Interview with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam and Peter Brewer
It was important for me to write lyrically, to give these women a poetic eloquence in the face of adversity.
Review
Life Where You Want It
A Flash Review
The story itself similarly inverts and subverts the reader’s expectations.
Nonfiction
Cottonmouth
Brent Fisk
The snake writhed though dead, turned the bilge water pink, and ruined my mother’s white tennis shoes.
