When I Speak Up For Myself, It Sounds Like Killing A Lobster
by Allyn Bernkopf issue 77 I plunge a blade behind her head & rip abdomen away from carapace. Her mouths gape in silence as my bone splitter splits & I feel her last flinch shiver under my nails. I hover her body over a steaming bowl, new water— tomb—to call home. Ghost limb syndrome haunts […]
Every Day is Someone’s First in Purgatory
by Samuel Piccone winner of the 2021-2022 Kay Murphy Prize for Poetry issue 76 My wife’s stethoscope necklaces her with the soon-to-be-dead, a stack of red manilla drags her out the door, “Just shoot me already.” The owner who calls to remind her he’ll hang himself if she doesn’t save his cat is calling again. There’s […]
I Cancel Your Plane Tickets
by Rita Mookerjee issue 76 since you won’t be coming to the island the way we’ve been planning for months, it’s a pretty ideal time to break the news to me. After weeks of fighting, I pull up pictures of the bamboo hut on the water that we chose, though we knew that a single ceiling fan […]
Sand Dunes
by Amy Kolen issue 76 Though it’s only late morning, the sun has already burned off the clouds in the thin air, leaving the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains as brief white blazes in the sea of blue sky. Behind me, Medano Creek, one of the waterways that seasonally flows through the Dunes, creating, in […]
The Wolf Indicator
by Jacqueline Berger issue 76 A good man avoidsthe no-fly zoneof a daughter’s body.That leaves arms and hair and feet and back and shoulders and kneesand calves and ankles. He’s been dead for a decadeand you still can’t put into words, can’t or won’t,but today the new hygienist, young, gay, fresh from training,really wants to talkabout your teeth.So now […]
When We’ve Been Married Nearly a Year, My Wife and I Share a Toothbrush for the First Time
by Remi Recchia issue 76 Power out. Tree resting on the telephone wire like an overexerted watchman. Cannot see through bathroom window. Nothing to see through bathroom window. No baby to comfort during storm. No baby for a long time. And God said to Rachel. And God said to Mary. He does not say to […]
Issue 76
You can purchase this issue of Bayou Magazine here. 2021-2022 James Knudsen Prize for Fiction Jonny Twoxfour Michigan is a State 2021-2022 Kay Murphy Prize for Poetry Samuel Piccone Every Day Is Someone’s First in Purgatory Fiction Kati Eisenhuth Michael Antoinetti Joe De Quattro Rae Canaan T. S. McAdams Andrew David MacDonald Hannah Feustle Evolution The […]
The Marvelous Curve
by Andrew David MacDonald issue 76 I. Uritz was shelving some tattered hard covers when the gunshots went off. He didn’t bother stopping. Whenever someone tried to escape, they were shot. Uritz liked the smell of the old books and focused on that instead of the noise. An alarm bell ringing followed the gunshots, and […]
The Negative Cutter
by Sarah Kobrinsky issue 59 I DON’T REMEMBER WHEN I STOPPED looking for her name. It was a game we played in high school. We stayed until the end of every film to see the name of the negative cutter up on the big screen. We waited patiently in the dark as the credits rolled […]
Stay a Stand-Up Bassist Forever
by Jillian Weise issue 60 DEAR NYLES- I’M WRITING TO YOU on a beige and brown typewriter with a resistant return so I have to push when I get to the end of the line. I’m writing to you from an A-frame in the middle of some woods, near a pond in South Carolina. I’m […]