by Alice Blackwell “Growing up, bicycle riding seemed like a rudimentary skill / Instead, I developed my own LLC to diagnose, treat, and mend wounds / My healing abilities emerged at 8 / Far too you...

by Piper Rasmussen “The vision of a Queen appears ( see also: milagro, fantasma) / ‍as if from the center of a fluffy white cloud / ( see also: oscurecida, desaparecida)”

by Tom Stuckey “There was something distant and asexual about Sandra, she was too much sex that it became non-sexual.”

by Kendra Augustin “The baby stares into your eyes like it has something to say. Does it have something to say or do staring contests just come naturally to babies?”

by Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff “One day waves will break through the walls, rush up and over the prom, crash through the glass, and carry the seals back to the ocean. They will float on their backs and b...

This is the home of our communities: The SmokeLong Fitness year-round workshop The Village with All of the Flash Writers

by Nayt Rundquist “Lighting flickers across blackening expanse distorted through rainstreaked panes, & the zombies seem a little less eager to break into your room.”

by Wayne F. Burke “A man calls “come / when I call” and / a small boy comes running.”

by Mitchell Ny “ Hup hup. Feel your chest expand. When it’s all-the-way full, take two more little sips and hold. Count to three. And whoosh—let it all out. Imagine your lungs shriveling like raisin...

by Phaedra Saffron “This drink is honey, spice, and spirit…I shall drink it in your honor, your ever-loving memory. Serenaded by her speeding cars, her homeless men playing all manner of instruments...

by Mitchell Ny “ Hup hup. Feel your chest expand. When it’s all-the-way full, take two more little sips and hold. Count to three. And whoosh—let it all out. Imagine your lungs shriveling like raisin...

by Jade Kleiner “…my eyes droop. my soul droops, / but my toes in their shoes do not. / every toe is agitated, ready to run…”

by Joe Pagano, Jr. “That night you plucked the red words / from my mouth like berries in the wild / and found a place for them in your breast…”

by Tom Stuckey “To be fair to Billy, I could understand his desire to escape. If I were 20 again I would perhaps have had the same desire, but now in my 40’s it deemed to be unreasonable, if not und...

by Tarah Burrows “ Tupelo trees slumber in a stagnant river, sentinels dozing under a net of stars. A portrait of idleness, they loom undisturbed. Stoic.”

by Liz Mariani “This Buffalo pizza sweats lakes of golden grease / Like proud parents / We glaze lovingly into these tiny bowls / Liquid copper pepperoni peace”

by Crystal James “Today, I celebrate my inner child / Her strength and resilience / Her messy hair and shy voice / Her dirty feet and fearless climb / Her vigilance / Her hope / Her love for red pop...

by Ellen White “My cousin and I have been looking for Bridget Reynold’s grave for twenty years. Lots of Reynolds. Just one Cornelius. On the headstone:  Bridget, his Wife  cut sharp beneat...

by Loel Earl “If I had a nickel / for every time / I had a tumid erection / on an airplane, / I'd have the necessary funds to / purchase a plane…”

by A. L. Smith “I should have realized something was wrong when I saw the rag stuffed into the floor vent and heard her lingering on the other side of the door, barring my escape.”

by Shon Mapp “…your nightshade skin / seems so smooth, / taut. My teeth long / to pierce it. Lessen / this buffer of air / between us.”

by E. G. Ware “‘she’s such a good baby,’ my mother says, present and bright…’she never cries,’ my father says, as the wine climbs red, ‘we forget she is there, she’s feather and light,’ no crying, o...

by Wesley R. Bishop “True men don’t cry,” my father told me the day the pony threw me to the ground. “Those who do, walk home.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More ) “It is at times when I / am bored into inertia I write / as act of defibrillation…”

by Ioana Barbulescu “I’ve been unwell for days. It’s the blood moon , my husband jokes, and I wonder if chewing on his liver would quench my anemic thirst.”

by Robert John Miller “I was honored to drive the family RV as our addition to the Drive Across America Road Trip Festival. It helped that Dad was still in prison and Mom was rum-drunk and I had jus...

by Tempest Miller “…arriving with a mahogany scent / with bells / with a birthmark / a crown of bones…”

by Shena Cavallo “I had always imagined divorce was something that happened when you are betrayed, when you fight and scream and treat each other poorly..There is sometimes no terrible event, no gre...

by Brittany Pike “…as long as something listens—be it whale or human or machine—the ocean will remember us all.”

by Craig Constantine “Love at last sight, / Valedictorian of the first. / The eyes of experience, / Elegiacally taking their leave. / And the eyes of innocence, / Waking up to the erotic.”

by Tom Stuckey “They took him to the isolation room, thick, padded and dark, and held him down whist Dr. Richards gave him a shot…He would have to wait at least another few days until he could try t...

Digital Art by Mary Coleman

by Bill Neumire “[Jesse] just got a senior lecturer position at Cornell and he gets to teach a class on happiness, which is a secular replacement for god.

by Mick Theebs “‘Yeah, well if you think my ego was big before, just wait. It’s not every day someone achieves enlightenment you know.’”

by Michael Templeton “I think the fact that young people are looking at each other online and describing what they see as aesthetic involves something more profound than trendy kid stuff.”

by Philip Venzke “…that overly extended siren wail / was so loud it woke up the over-ripe banana /hibernating on a cigarette encrusted sidewalk.”

by Marty Shambles “the last time the / cowboys won the / superbowl i ate the pâté / thinking it was chicken / salad and it was disgusting.”

by Honor Teoudoussia “Now, she is tired of his attention. And his crises, and his ADHD, and his PTSD, and his weed smoking. Tired of all the attention on him.”

by Frank Haberle “ Come, children, the man standing on a box / In the center of the bridge yelled to us, / In Shakespeare. Let us shut up this box / And put away these puppets, for our play / Has ...

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More ) “True love is something / that cannot be found… / …Do not go looking.”

by Monique Quintana “The rose garden is dead but not dying. I prop my phone on steps and pillars to take thirst-trap pictures I can pepper my Instagram feed with. In one picture, I am lounging on a ...

by X.C. Atkins “I’d dump them into the lake just out of town, as usual. I sawed them into manageable pieces, listening to the Cocteau Twins.”

by Brian Washines “I took the radio out onto the balcony and tossed it. When it hit the parking lot it went into what appeared to be three separate pieces. Someone in one of the other apartments acr...

by Melissa Llanes Brownlee “and we dance the hula and we dance the hula and we don’t tell our stories not the ones you want to know…”