ISSUE 07
Steve Evans. Oteeyho Iro. Charles Haddox. Zama Madinana. Taylor Graham. Natalie Harris-Spencer. Jason Lobell. Maggie Yang. Aaron Weinzapfel. Meredith Wadley. Asma Al-Masyabi. Linda Neal. Shilo Niziolek. David A. Porter.
04
READ • WATCH • LISTEN
Trey Keeve takes us to Virginia. McLeod Logue figures her mother's eaten a worm. Tarek Ghaddar's middle name is Mohamad. Byung A. Fallgren plunges into the icy stream; ages blue and deep. Audrey Gidman lets us peek at her notes. Robbie Q. Telfer terrifies his lover with frogs. Jennifer L. Freed opens a cabinet. Benjamin Faro finds the middle coda in Beethoven's last unwritten fantasia, and Emma Miao recovers a whimpering baby, fingers nestled on triggers and so much future undelivered.
Daniel Riddle Rodriguez quizzes us. Alyssa Greenberg sneaks us into a disused miniature golf complex at the edge of town, while Joe Baumann barrels down I-70, brake lights flashing like rubies on one side of the highway, headlights like pearls on the other. Amy Barnes speculates on how a trio of fake horses appeared in the town square. Diana Xin takes out the garbage. Emilee Prado goes back and forth until we are in sync, and Melissa Wiley knows why the women are doing their laundry in the public fountain.
POETRY
TREY
KEEVE
“Virginia Poem A”
and other poems
"bees must flock to this place / knowing it was the sepal / that gave way to the first petal"
MCLEOD
LOGUE
“What Comes Next
(Worm Poem)”
and other poems
"I know I tasted earth before butter"
TAREK
GHADDAR
“The Beach in Tyre”
and other poems
“My friends swam into the water, / whipped by red jellyfish”
BYUNG A.
FALLGREN
“The Woman at the Frozen Creek”
and other poems
“your hands scarlet-red, / your face, a sunflower, turned to / bronze statue..."
AUDREY
GIDMAN
“notes on shame”
and other poems
“I've tried to write praise poems / for a spine that spits me out bent”
ROBBIE Q.
TELFER
“Penultimate Rites”
and other poems
“if it was just my cabinet alone it’d be / salt, garlic, garlic salt, and an ant trap.”
JENNIFER
FREED
“Still”
and other poems
“...we decide to keep them all / in one soft gathering, inside / the old humidor.”
BENJAMIN
FARO
“Perfect Elasticity”
and other poems
“Hooke's law states / that a given object / will return to its original shape"
EMMA
MIAO
“Mistranslations"
and other poems
“to escape his tingling body / to swallow the mantelpiece whole"
FICTION
DANIEL
RIDDLE
RODRIGUEZ
"How to Spot a Monster: A Field Guide for Girls"
“He tells you every woman has thought about selling it at least once. 'Like suicide,' he says. 'Or same-sex sex...'”
ALYSSA
GREENBERG
"The Magic of the Cove"
“Growing up we all knew there was a disused miniature golf complex at the edge of town...”
JOE
BAUMANN
"Sing With Me at the Edge of Paradise"
“When he stops, I recognize the Tree of Knowledge, with its thick-ribbed greenery and heavy fruit.”
AMY
BARNES
"I. Hippodrome..."
“A trio of fake horses appears in the Difficult town square.”
DIANA
XIN
"Garbage"
“When he walked past the shared laundromat, empty cans followed after him like a line of ducklings, rattling against the asphalt, stirred by the autumnal breeze.”
EMILEE
PRADO
"Hold the Line"
“At first, he doesn’t see me because I am on the floor in the corner behind the table. I’m eating from a bag of pretzels.”
MELISSA
WILEY
"Colony Collapsing"
“Women wearing headscarves fold their clothes around the base of a fountain...”
WATCH
THE SUBNIVEAN
AWARDS
What do Lemony Snicket (AKA Daniel Handler), April Sinclair (whose book, Coffee Will Make You Black, will soon be a major motion picture) and luminary poet Arisa White have in common?
Subnivean. Catch these heavyweight authors in conversation, and then prepare to get read to like a baby at bedtime by the Subnivean Awards finalists: poets Chaun Ballard, Joan Kwon Glass, Canaan Morse and Emma Wynn; fiction writers Nicole Lynn Cohen, Jared Green, Angie Kang and Kyle Rea.
"I would recommend, like, a bottle of Jim Beam ... before Googling yourself." — Daniel Handler