by Lisobel Tang...My mother hates dogs. A city child in the sixties, she often stayed with her aunt in a rural village south of Shanghai. The dogs there, she assures me, reveal the true nature of the species

by Mandira Pattnaik Blaz photo Reading can ruin your writing career. No one says that — it is equivalent to sacrilege in the literary world. In fact, the popular advice is exactly the opposite: reading helps with writing. I’ve been hearing this ever since I can remember, even when I wasn’t writing. Will I still choose to advise against reading? Yes. Don’t get me wrong — I am advising against reading too much when you are already a writer, and not any reading by any person pic

by Jordyn Damato Олег Мороз 0 I believe in love as much as I believe in any form of God above; below; or to the right of us. I believe in procreation and controlled-population; whatever’s necessary at the time; I understand the importance of marriage; of owning somebody to feel important; of owning somebody else to own anything at all. I understand why homes are built to house couples; to house families; I understand why husband and wife slept in separate beds until the 1950’

by Justin Karcher Trude Jonsson Stangel and squeeze into it in the fitting room. Walking out I feel like a better man everyone rubbing my stomach in praise. At the register the cashier exclaims it’s a special day where dashed dreams cost nothing at all. They glue an umbilical cord of wilted lotus flowers onto my belly button and then I’m pulled back into reality. In the parking lot the country is falling apart. This old woman is scooping up snow with a dustpan. I can hear her

by Angela Townsend Ryoji Iwata I can’t give up on humanity, because when I drive by Taco Bell at ten p.m. on a Wednesday, the chalupa line wraps around the building twice. People in friendship bracelets and people in button-down shirts and people in a state of grace are making mischief. People are here because they are hungry and people are here because other people make the food and people are here because visiting hours just ended at the hospital. People arrive in Priuses a

by Ace Boggess Gabriela Fechet Snowing again. Today, we enter our third week of uncertainty. A herd of deer slide-steps down the hillock of our yard, five Gene Kellys dancing, not in rain, not singing. How do they keep hoofing it without falling? I walk outside, & cold fluff kisses my ears, caresses my neck. I flinch as if having made slightest contact easing past a stranger in the doorway: disconcerted & delighted, keeping that sensation private. Quiet? Quite. Exhale. Ace Bo

by Gordon Taylor Harvest Fields in Westerham, Kent, 1880–1910 by Helen Allingham The science was sound. Loam alone wasn’t enough, but when mixed with saline and injected, the effect answered every question. Every shout, sharp as a birthday candle flame biting a finger. Felt. Every cancer cell switched back to love, a Valentine’s Day card. No more — is the path to survival pretending not to be queasy. No more — what is the difference between illness and leaving. Between intrav

by Cole Beauchamp Jan Kopřiva Shauna has had one too many evenings with the cobalt blue de Gournay wallpaper, the glowing chandelier, the polite clink of silverware. She leaps up. Let’s go skinny dipping! And out she charges, into the soft Tennessee night. Voices titter behind her. Good, they’re following. She kicks off her sling backs, sinks her toes into dewy grass as she disrobes. Faux fur stole, purple sequin cocktail dress, thong, Vanity Fair Full Figure Beauty Back Smoo

by Sabyasachi Roy Michael Dziedzic They wove my hair into wires —  a twisted halo that sings in static. My scalp hums lullabies in 8-bit, the sleep-code of orphaned machines. I used to spin silk from moonlight. Now I splice circuits, map longing onto logic gates. Memory has teeth. It bites. The venom is sweet —  thick as syrup bled from old sins. I see through one eye: fractured glass, each shard a version of me buried under passwords. My mane stays long —  a relic of mammal,

by Rowan Tate BHLNZ - Biodiversity Heritage Library NZ The world may end with a poppy blooming between my toes. Its ripe red face splitting open from roots made from my skin. It knows. Mother, forgive me for I have pluck-pulled petals from their stems, swept dirt beneath the altar steps, let the bees drown in a glass of sugared tea. I walked without looking, past the face of a trembling bird, trampling moss that was still learning to breathe. I have turned my back on a callin

by Jeff Harvey Delaney Van Momma asks her best friend Edna if she’d help color her hair with a box of dye she got from the discount rack at Fred’s Dollar Store, andwhile the color is setting Momma lights a Winston and says Miss Jasper next door doesn’t have kids since she never hooked a husband and has to work for AT&T all day saying Number Please with nobody to talk to when she gets home, says shelives off TV dinners and drinks fancy wine while watching Dynasty, says every n

by Mandira Pattnaik Mahmoud Sulaiman After my last column, I did not expect to talk about witnessing again so soon. In a different context though, but equally miserable and malevolent. Ukraine-Russia, India-Pakistan, and now Iran-Israel. I did not expect us to be in a long dark tunnel of anxiety so enormous that we traverse through it without knowing whither its light, whither its end. I did not foresee such a disavowal of human tragedy no matter where we stand. And surely, w

by Paul Chuks Elti Meshau Rain pattered the roof. The hall was quiet, a pin drop would have sounded like a riot. Grime faces stared at their question papers, lecturers paced the hall, more bounce added to their step — a devilish grin that seemed like the grime faces validated their mischievousness. On my seat, the wind stalked me like a stubborn ex. It removed my cap and scattered my hair that I had gripped in a rubber band. A lecturer strolled my way and held my hand as I wa

Road Ahead/Unsplash Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Nevada poet and essayist Dani Putney takes documentary poetics to a new level in Mix-Mix (Baobab Press, 2025). By documentary, I mean a certain relation to historical reality, which is not to say this is historical poetry. It is vivid poetry — lyrical, cynical, ironic, touching, sexy. Because the poet approaches history with all senses and emotions aflame, with heart beating beneath the inquiry, letting itself be known, the result

by Amy DeBellis Mother’s Embrace by Mikuláš Galanda via Europeana I find her behind the church, tiny in the dirt, curled up like a seashell. I recognize her not with any of my senses but with something banging behind my breastbone, something that screams: That’s her that’s her that’s her! So I scoop her up. I hold her in the palm of my hand, sunk deep into my pocket, all the way home: past the boarded-up storefronts, past the porch where Mrs. Calloway rocks in her dilapidated

by Snehal Bhadani Max Griss Steel bars crosshatch the sky into trembling cells of light. Below, the taxicabs glint in emerald so sharp it stings my eyes. The fruit-seller’s cart spills overripe melon: sweet, gangrenous. Little black plums crowd like wet beetles. The train’s horn guts the air, bellowing the arrival of the traveler. The elderly shuffle in slow arithmetic. Children dart with expertise, like minnows through the throng. In one hand a newspaper, and in the other, c

by Tom Busillo iuliu illes It was said that you pressed your ear to her cheek. Old men doffed their hats without knowing why. Some remember it as what came after the thunder. Each tooth had its tiny frame. When she smiled, bells rang. When she yawned, wheels spun. When she kissed the air, rubber burned. The town didn’t ask questions. They just learned to look away during mealtimes. Children stopped crying. You could hear a distant street hissing. One spring, a stranger with m

by Sarp Sozdinler Max Fleischmann Someone’s shadow stalks me on a rainy day. Asks me out on a candlelit dinner with saffron rice. Folds herself into the steam rising off my tea. Twists my bedsheets into folds. The shadow knows I’m obsessed with Patti Smith’s Horses. Shouts DANCE LIKE YOU MEAN IT. Bounces on the couch like a kid. The shadow calls me her oversized mermaid. Orders bánh mì a little too spicy for my taste. Tips in fives and tens. Parties past dawn. Blows in my ear

by LC Gutierrez Sami Salim To whom this may concern We are writing to confirm that LC’s mother, xxxx xxxxxxxxx, was admitted on xx/xx/xxxx. She maintains a beauty tendered like that of a felled tree consumed already from beneath. Her fragility reminds one of a keepsake stored in crumbling tissue. He hesitates to touch. We know that you need him —  but he is ours for now. He sits still bedside studying 9 Traits That Make a Decent Man. Encased in shadowed memory and half-forgiv

by Spencer Eckart No Revisions/Unsplash They held a parade in your honor, but you hadn’t vanished yet. You were still wolfing hummus, still putting on one odd sock. Everyone kept applauding anyway. They mistook your doubt for performance art. The mayor read a speech about how brave it is to disappear. Later, someone said you were just hiding in the crawlspace beneath yourself. They brought blankets. They waited all year. Spencer Eckart is a hybrid poet with work published or