POETRY By Neil Flatman  Late sun longing through the knuck­les of the black­thorns by the pond; a lan­guorous spark. The copper heads of ferns bow down with what remain­ing dignity they hold. Autumn’s flown; longer days dis­solved fast as a winter breath. Surely that’s the memory,…

POETRY By Gary English Juarez tethers me like a balero with a bridge instead of string. I tread Stanton’s crammed path over the near-water­­less Rio Grande. I could have walked its dehy­drat­ed bed. Tanned leather’s weath­ered smell infuses the mercado’s air. Piñatas, penuche. Day of the Dead disguises,…

POETRY By Moham­mad Razai Ren­dezvous (I) Last night in my dream you smiled in a way that meant more than friend­ship, so I am check­ing if that’s what you mean. We fre­quent that lamp-lit cobbled street, slalom­ing in some misty labyrinth so hazy I’m waiting for…

POETRY By Kim­ber­ly Ann Priest “Paula, my watch is gone.” GREGORY in Gaslight, 1944 It’s this way: after doing several loads of laundry, or dusting every inch of slight surface in a home’s several rooms, that you start to lose track of one thing or another—…

POETRY By Michelle Parker Randall You tell me I’ve given you some­thing impos­si­ble. You shake your head to the rhythm of my voice pealing you are safe, safe; you hold out your hands, wrists togeth­er, for hand­cuffs only you can see. Our son visited today, but…

POETRY By Heikki Huotari if aurora bore­alis­es are any indi­ca­tion the extrater­res­tri­als are at peace and the def­i­n­i­tion of life is accord­ing­ly revised      the random acts and I are inde­pen­dent and iden­ti­cal­ly dis­trib­uted so sing it side­ways what’s a wan­der­ing eye or appendage to do …

POETRY By Sheila Black Go lightly. The way pain enters each day. Light the candle of flowers that blooms half-des­ic­­cat­ed on the road­side. South Texas, south San Anto. The truck was parked through the hot morning. No one heard the cries that rose from it. Or recognized…

POETRY By Luke Johnson and Megan Mer­chant For M,   We could talk about the baby hump­back who washed ashore with a belly of trash and the net used for catch­ing thou­sands of fish. How chil­dren circled to see its slick skin flake in the sun of…

POETRY By Al Mag­innes We’d decided we didn’t need the new guy before he arrived. But he was a good worker, good enough for some of us to recon­sid­er letting him go. Until the morning he began to speak from nowhere about zebras and their yearn­ing for the…

FICTION By Chris Daly 1. Pre­lim­i­nary Report, with notes and “eyes-only” mate­r­i­al, includ­ing  recov­ered com­mu­ni­ca­tions, from the days prior to the inci­dent which has  come to the atten­tion of so many, sub­mit­ted by Sr. Vol­un­teer Patrol Officer  Childe Gordon, BS Crim­i­nal Justice Theory, BA English Lit, Bonito…