Shades of Nude
issue 64 IN MY GYM’S LOCKER ROOM, I WATCH A WOMAN. She’s there every Tuesday at the same time. I’ll be straightening my hair in the mirror, crafting myself for work, and suddenly she’ll be bent over between the lockers slathering lotion between her toes. The first time I saw her […]
In this Place and Nowhere Else
by Brad Cobb issue 66 AFTER HIS FATHER DIED of a bad liver and meanness, the boy scraped together enough money for a bus ticket out west where he planned to get a job as a ranch hand, though he had no experience and had never ridden a horse. […]
Untitled Prose Poem (#1)
Lineage
by Layla Al-Bedawi issue 67 On Monday I don’t even go inside. I circle the house twice, looking for clues about what is expected of me, how I might help. Finally the only thing I can think to do is drive down to the nursery, buy a bag of tulip bulbs and a shovel, and […]
You and Your Middle-Aged Cat
by Meg Pokrass issue 69 WHEN YOU RETURN TO UMA’S HOUSE, she and a girlfriend are drinking wine, cooing over a brochure of eye makeup shades. Uma’s girlfriend looks at you as if something is amiss. “You look cute today,” she says, slicing her eyes up at you. “Is that a new shade of lipstick?” […]
A Tomb Dug Under Mother
by Dustin M. Hoffman issue 69 Above your bed where you lie belly up, Hector’s mom rattles around in the kitchen. She’s home like a haunting. She must’ve forgotten her midnight lunch at work. This woman, your unwilling adopter, lives her life reversed, nocturnal, a living-dead working stiff. You close your eyes and imagine her […]
Hostitality
by Nola Propst issue 69 Thinking of South Carolina summers I think of the sensation of biting into a rotten apple. I think of the way in which my teeth sink into an elastic skin and through to a pulpous body, then the taste of decay. And No matter how vigorously I scrape my tongue […]
The Satchel
by Shawn Goodman issue 70 This is how it started: I froze in the med line. Call me Lithium Fat. Call me Nicotine Stain and Compulsive Collector of Notebook Ticks. Call me Sleeps in Clothes, Bipolio, Massive Depressive. Call me Joe. The new staff guy checked his clipboard. “Joe,” he called, fingers pushing pills out […]
Psalm for a Full Tank of Gas
by Joy Clark issue 71 Can we get someone to turn down the music? No, Sam, I am not too drunk to be standing on this chair. Don’t tell me to climb down again. Don’t act like you can’t see that I’m here. I’m here. Here I am to proclaim the fucking miracles of the […]
Toothbrushing
by Samantha Steiner issue 74 At six thirty, we push blankets off, pull sweaters on, and shuffle to the bathroom. He squeezes toothpaste onto my brush before getting his own. “Can we turn the lights off?” I ask. “Why?” “The light hurts my eyes.” He gets the switch. We click our brushes together like champagne […]