Issue 22
Full of longing—for connection, for love, for belonging—the characters in these stories find hope in things that don’t quite make sense: a unicorn on a ceiling, a beautiful video game glitch, a made-up disease that turns out to be spectacularly real.
They’re looking back at their lives so far and also forward into the future, struggling to be hopeful in a world that tells them they shouldn’t be.
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Fiction
How do you completely exclude one of the primary colors?
He would have walked outside, naked, to see what she grew, but the moon was too bright.
He crests the ridge and slide down through salal and sword fern, plants his feet in creek mud, and stops to catch his breath, to listen.
Nothing but the gurgle of water, the swaying trees, his own hard-charging heart.
”Ack, ack, ack!” go the foxes on Instagram.
There’s probably a herd of woman bugs fleeing to Bed Island as we speak. Victims of sex crimes. Looking to drown their worries with the sweet taste of blood.
Dasha has read the horror stories online—a whole subreddit devoted to people who went on O trips and swore they never got custody of their brains back.
Louisa had no hobbies and no whims, other than the gently pulsing desire to play the game at all possible hours.
By the time Jenny found out what was happening, she realized Luke had actually been doing pretty well, considering what he was up to was illegal.
Poetry
Virginia pine and more Virginia pine. Toad chirr at night.
Scribble of the mussel’s path in the shallows.
For god’s sake don’t
look out a window.
In a fawn-skin pouch, I keep a letter of introduction. Upon it I lay my head.
They hate it,
they’ll kill you–
they’re black holes,
they can’t be eavesdropped upon.
you thought of the times the place got rowdy,
Five folks elbow to elbow, passing the toilet paper,
The weird dance of odors, postures
I listened to the spiderwort’s purple testimony
and heard the fat rattle present its evidence,
also the subpoenaed catalpa.
Latest News
Looking back matters. We should recognize what is of value in tradition, or what our contemporary culture doesn’t pay attention to. But we need to also recognize the truth of the past, which, well, for a long stretch of this country’s history, it didn’t make enough room for folks.
We second guess ourselves so much during writing. We'll stop, read, edit, overthink… I think by starting with something wild, we can get rid of some of the overthinking.
Sneak peek from Issue 22: By the time Jenny found out what was happening, she realized Luke had actually been doing pretty well, considering what he was up to was illegal.
