Issue 18

FICTION By Michael Oatman and Jackson Smith Because every brother man’s life is like swing­ing the dice, right?   Pearson stretched out at the hos­pi­tal picnic table. His eyes forward. His hair slicked back. His new heart pumping, pumping, pumping. He had done well over this handful…

POETRY By Sheila Black The rattler your husband impaled by bring­ing down his shovel, the body split in two, those twitch­ing parts. Frost killed the but­ter­fly weed and the orange tree. The prickly pear sprawled into slime, the wood splin­tered into apart­ment houses for ants and…

GENRE FICTION By Alan Cliffe Part One: Church­go­ing Men, 1945 Antoinette Timrod Tony didn’t seem like the other white guys at the El Dorado. I mean,  not just the obvious thing of being younger than his dad and uncles. He’d been over­seas for a few years, including…

POETRY By Jessica Cohn A woman could forget herself, staring at pome­gran­ate in the produce section. Juicy red arils, peddled in see-through cups. It’s invol­un­tary. The mouth makes room for a sweet bite of seeds. A woman could remem­ber when pome­gran­ate was hard to come by, a strange…

POETRY By Lucia Cherciu Temp­ta­tion: I find sandals for me when looking for gifts. Con­fu­sion: I buy two dresses for me when shop­ping for canning jars. Some claim gold has healing prop­er­ties; right, money helps. I research claims about the ben­e­fits of silver. Kissing of icons, silver chalice, silver…

POETRY By Sheila Black The year I spent a month in Denver vis­it­ing my daugh­ter in the eating dis­or­der hos­pi­tal the closest com­pan­ions were the geese who flocked the con­crete islands between the too-wide roads.   Some nights it was only fairy tales I understood:…

POETRY By Eric Abal­a­jon “I used to hang out just outside           the fence of Pearson Inter­na­tion­al, on week­ends with friends,         and bring binoc­u­lars. It became         a bad hobby imme­di­ate­ly after 9–11.”      …

DRAMATIC WORK   By KJ Stewart A play­ground. Recess. FOUGLAS (pro­nounced like“Douglas”) kicking wood chips around. CLEMENTINE under a slide pre­tend­ing to be a cat. FOUGLAS throws a wood chip at her. CLEMENTINE: That hurts. FOUGLAS: It’s because I like you. I found a Mouth in the Woods.…

CREATIVE NONFICTION By Jocelyn Heath My father calls to tell me that he has to give up swim­ming. His shoul­ders started aching awhile back, but he went on swim­ming until the pain buried itself so deep in his joints, espe­cial­ly at night, that he went…

Stonecoast Review, Issue 18 is now avail­able for pur­chase from local book­seller Kelly’s Books to Go. Support inde­pen­dent and inclu­sive pub­lish­ing today by order­ing a copy here. To our readers, here is a brief note from Stonecoast Review Issue 18 editor Caite McNeil that appears…