Kim Barke is a queer poet, playwright, composer, publisher, and creative director whose work defies conventional categorization. She holds a PhD in pharmacology and toxicology and an MFA in creativ…

At first glance, they looked just like babies. Frozen, lifeless newborns still curled up as if they had never left the warm insides of their mothers. But once I got a little closer, I saw what they…

The stain is in the middle of the bed, but the silovik’s wife never sleeps in the middle of the bed. She sleeps on the left side even when she is alone, which is much of the time. Polina is sure of…

Cassandra Trout narrates her days as a retail associate at an Eileen Fisher store in Philadelphia and her sleepless nights alone in Hidden River, Sara Lippmann’s sharp second novel. When she receiv…

“No gloves, no utensils,” was how the note ended. I didn’t notice this until I had parked in front of the house. I would usually leave the white to-go bag at the door, but for this order, it was re…

We collect memories and glean from experiences in the hope that they amount to something. Anything. We use these collections to fashion ourselves into something presentable. More human. We strive, …

TERMS OF SERVICE: Grip Semiotics & Class Diagnostics Grip pressure reveals your buyological gender, thumb-to-text tension, page-turn velocity, forearm torque, and knuckle-crack frequency. Palm …

Yelena Moskovich’s Nadezhda in the Dark begins in a room so still it almost seems sealed: two women in bed in Berlin, the lights off, neither speaking. From that nearly immobile setup, the book bui…

Yelena Moskovich’s Nadezhda in the Dark begins in a room so still it almost seems sealed: two women in bed in Berlin, the lights off, neither speaking. From that nearly immobile setup, the book bui…

Hindsight, Rosanna Warren’s seventh collection of poetry, looks back as it moves forward. A whiplash of recognition, we follow a speaker growing older alongside a country growing apart. The collect…

In Reduction in Force, Hugo Dos Santos writes from the fraught position of an immigrant father whose sense of arrival has been tethered—perhaps too tightly—to work. While the book takes its title f…

The twelve stories in this collection are introduced with an epigraph by F.G. Lorca relating to his idea concerning the nature of duende, in a quote by a renowned Flamenco singer who says, “All tha…

Lauren E. Osborn’s Entomology of the Pin-Up Girl opens with a dedication that is also a promise of what we’ll find inside: “for the insects and girls and those stuck somewhere in-between.” The stor…

POST-MORTEM REPORT NO. 0607-EX EXAMINER: [REDACTED]SUBJECT: Male, 29 years old.DATE OF EXAMINATION: Ongoing. I. EXTERNAL EXAMINATION The body presents no visible or any obvious trauma. Facial muscu…

Dan When I was in Detroit recently, my sister and I stopped at a restaurant at the Ford mansion. When we sat down, I heard a deep voice say my name. I looked up from the menu, and it was you, the m…

First, the dryer broke. Then the walkie-talkie in Brian’s room. Then my mother-in-law’s little marble angels lined along the topmost shelf of our china cabinet. No doubt we were being tested in som…

—Giuseppe Ungaretti the imminent forwardfinding this parkleaves the melting * limit false morefor all the lost songsarena of disobedience * long for hollow solesthrough solid orificesfull thought a…

I first got acquainted with Ryan through his submission to our print issue, Vol. 6, where he sent two poems called “sometimes the word for tender isn’t tender.” Fortunately I’ll always have these p…

Everyone said Goodwill will soon be flooded with you and your ilk. Butlast night I snuggled four frozen ovals of cheese bread inside your dark chamber. As if putting kids down for naps. Shh. When I…

Star Shining to get to the trees.Of light, of exact evening.A crescent whistles, scissorsin a narrow path. A long transitpasses at night pluckingat its verges. Who goes there?Who? Who gets to seam …

High Maintenance After my mentally ill ex moves out, I, also having moved the mental illness goalpost right off the soccer pitch, start doing things again: using bar soap, taking milk-less jugs to …

New York, New York From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on October 22, 2046. “New York” and “New York City” redirects here. For other uses, see Old N…

We are living in a shared apocalyptic dream, go ask anyone. Every headline a prophecy of doom, every drizzle diluvian, every vibrato a volcano. The world is being undone, line by line, voice by voi…

Treno verso nord To the left a climbing sea, there and far,the cry grew only direction.A loose refrain of granite and supposed forms,under every movement.Hear the exact skies, a journeyed brea…

When I was eleven I made a statueof my grandfather. My teachersaid we could pick anyone.Most of the boys picked quarterbacks. I painted his hair whitebecause I didn’t have gray.I asked my tea…

There was no way of telling where the messages were coming from exactly. Many attempts were made with sonar locating technological methods to zero in on their mysterious origin but to no avail. Dr.…

So the kids turn it into some sort of game with a lot of screaming. “How many balloons did you” POP AHHHHHHH “Did you say you bought again?” “Fifty, but it was a deal where you” POP AHHHHHHH “Let’s…

Grief Algebra We sit in silence around a table of four. We’re only three, because someone is missing. His chair is empty and will remain silent until someone visits and sits there, unaware of the v…

My mother is the text. I cannot enter her.Kate Zambreno, Book of Mutter The notebook begins like this: search for death rattle. Search for: death rattle, translation. Search for: rantolo terminale.…

Finding himself with a rare Tuesday off, Laramie decides to catch a movie. He had been told the local theater offered five-dollar matinees on Tuesdays, and while there is not anything playing he pa…

These poems are based on my engagement with The Thunder, Perfect Mind: a poem written by an unknown woman from Egypt in the fourth century. Pagan and Christian ideas were merging and transforming i…

(A dreamoir inspired by Wendy C. Ortiz) I wake with a sharp pain behind my eyes, the kind that makes it difficult to open them. I rise in a fog of headache and blurred vision, taking careful, tende…

Lauren C. Johnson’s rescue dove Schooner is perched on her knuckles, eyeing me through the Zoom interview screen. “He’s bonded into a really hands-on bird. See? I can just scratch…

Science fiction and Mormonism were born together. Scholar Gillen D’arcy Wood explains how the same volcanic eruption that sent Mary Shelley indoors to write Frankenstein, thus inventing scien…

If you don’t know Lillian Nećakov she is a humble but stellar poet out of Toronto. It is hard to explain her work because it slips out of convention and time and space and identity all in the space…

When momma cooked supper I washedthe dishes, while my sister dried, caressingthem like a crystal ball, and we sawour unmapped futures.Babies are made this way, we clenchour teeth hold our breath ho…

There were some clerical mistakes, so everyone who’d been to college was hastily issued officer swords. We were meant to sheath them in holes on the floor and swing leather satchels with flourish. …

would’ve made foaming volcanoes instead of tri-fold book blurbs at sixth-grade state-mandated science fairs. I would propose hypotheses on how much anxiety affects comorbidity with eating disorders…

My Oncologist After being told I had a year to live, I decided one evening to visit my oncologist’s private residence in Pacific Heights. It is a very nice neighborhood. Homes like state capitol bu…

Sometimes a whole year slips by. Verity said the Inuit died as ice closed around their meat-holes. There is always skin, skin on ruins, trawls in chlorine. I wave moronically at widow peaks, a wind…