Ann sat at her kitchen table, snipping coupons from the weekly mailer. $.25 off Tampax, $.50 off Garden Burgers, buy one bottle of Suave, get the second bottle free. Ann placed these beside an envelope marked “Jennifer Dion.” $.60 off AXE deodorant. A free one-month membership to Sam’s Club. A whole page of Pizza Hut … More Out of Reach, by Shana Genre
Recipient of the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (2015), Ross Gay shapes language, roots fused with variegated ash, to chronicle experiences, the profane crafted sacred through simple gestures of doing and undoing, buttoning and unbuttoning, while resisting the need to dissect his artistry with “an X-Acto knife.” When asked what … More Lovingly Grateful: An Interview with Ross Gay; Interview conducted by Laine Derr
I was honored when Carl Phillips, Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed to an interview. He is a prolific author whose most recent collection Reconnaissance (2015) continues to establish him as a leading poetic voice. When asked what advice he would give to someone new to writing, Phillips succinctly responded, “Read … More A Gesture of Love: An Interview with Carl Phillips; Interview conducted by Laine Derr
Emily was beside herself. Literally, beside herself. She wasn’t sure what happened or how it was even possible. One minute she was on the 2 train sitting between a woman reading The Alchemist (cliché) and a business suit with a cell phone clipped to his belt. (Also cliché. Also tacky and gauche). The next minute … More Emily, Beside Herself by Jennifer Fliss
When I was growing up, we had a twenty-five-inch screen television in every room. I watched the Doors perform “Light My Fire” on Ed Sullivan in my bedroom when I was just a little kid. Dad was home from work, sucking down a bumper of beer in his easy chair in the family room, Walter … More Watching TV by John Talbird
Standing in the Garden of Myself Where My Lover Misplaced a Rusting Trowel sweet nectar of firebush plumbing the fraudulent ____________________________________this argument from broken deities __________________does it matter? ________________________as light unspools across the thorax of _________________________________________inevitability___________________wading _____course you don’t know me _________________________________________________in this winter-colored dress, my wine-streaked cheeks, their hasty bloom _____________________a zebra longwing … More 3 Poems by Ashley Kunsa
By Damyanti Biswas From a distance, she took him for a boy. But on looking closer, Laura knew him for a boy-sized man, one of those people nature chooses to sport with. She felt a gush of rage. She wanted to gather him up in her soft arms and tell him he looked good in … More For All The Men Who Slept With Her
By Christine Davis I remember being seventeen in Ms. Knudsen’s AP Environmental Science class. She was Canadian and had purple streaks in her hair, so everyone wanted to enroll. Each day we learned that the planet was doomed. G.K. Lamb’s dystopian, debut novel is about this inevitable doom as told through the first-person lens of … More G.K. Lamb at Bookmans Saturday
Vintage Binoculars by Leah Browning Danny found them on a shelf at the back of the shop. The thin leather strap was worn to a string on one side, and missing its snap, but someone had looped it through and tied it in a knot. They were otherwise in good condition, for their age. He took them to … More Vintage Binoculars
Flight 2418 By Paul Bergstraesser “Sir?” Was she talking to him? Who knew. He kept his eyes closed. “Sir.” Yeah, it was him. He took a deep breath and looked at the flight attendant. Her face was artificial-nice from corporate training but underneath he read sourness and disgust. Wasn’t the first time somebody had been repulsed by … More Flight 2418
