Issue 21
Latest Reviews
Featured Interview
Newest Essay

Solitudes in Pair

Ivan Jozić
Translated by Marta Huber

Sometimes I travel alone and that’s all right; tonight, however that’s not the case. Here in the East, the night is born out of the winter’s pupil, the taxi driver’s heart, or something just as cold.

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Target Practice

Larry D. Thacker

Can I shoot a round
into the sky high enough

for it to fall
back to earth and burn

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Inclusion

Larry D. Thacker

Do they feel you hinting around
as they gather up for photos.
At the wedding reception.
The family reunion. After cleaning
the graves on Memorial Day.

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If

Evelyn Martinez

Life or death? I am twenty-six years old, standing at the edge of a scenic overlook a few miles from Lake Arrowhead. Far below, the Inland Empire extends its freeway and housing tracts into the orange-gray haze.

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Hanging

Mohammad-Ali Sepanlou
Translated by Siavash Saadlou

I am the last seeping of the rain,
hanging from a dried leave,
from the bare woman of the tree,
rolling on the floor.

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What We Do To Ants

Joelle Lambert

In the springtime, the ants in the house get out of control. I lose sleep over it. I have tried so many things to rid my house of ants.

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Youth

Mannika Mishra

So far, she had seen only one person wearing sunglasses indoors.
The sky outside was stripped to brazen blue and inspired recklessness; grim forecasts for later in the day couldn’t possibly be right.

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Wild Swan

Zachary Schomburg

Like a wild swan with a blue shadow, I know not where I’ve swum. I bow down my head deep in the dark ripple. I honk there deep into the darkness.

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Land of the Free

Zachary Schomburg

I was busy eating a butterscotch candy next to my pony when my tote bag was found. “Your tote bag!” shouted someone named Land of the Free. “I found it.”

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Little By Little We Stop Thinking

Zachary Schomburg

My father was on top of my brother, his knees on my brother’s arms. He looked like a toppling house on top of another house just starting to topple.

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Retinal Detachment

Sabahattan Ali
Translated by Daniel Koehler

Once again, I was out of work, and this time I was living off the generosity of a relative who owned a private hospital in Ankara.

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Open Sesame

Clara E. Ronderos
Translated by Mary G. Berg

Gabriela didn’t have a lot of respect for Professor Millán. His esoteric assignments made the writing workshop a space that encouraged exaggeration and false prophecies.

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The Move

Karla Marrufo
Translated by Allison A. deFreese

we arrived at midday,
with our luggage in hand

the sun a cement square
stretching out beneath our feet,
the sky a sharp blow to the face—

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Noteworthy

D-L Alvarez

This was a Mexican restaurant in Oakland. Milo was in the back area, taking the corner stage to sing karaoke. It was 1998 and Milo was celebrating his birthday, but then the plug was pulled, mid-“Never Let Me Down Again.”

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Glow Worm

Ty Hall

She never let me in her bed, not at first anyway. She said she didn’t let any men in her bed. I didn’t believe her, seeing from the hallway purple velvet Velcro hand restraints wrapped around her headboard’s posts.

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Bind yourself to us with your impossible voice, your voice! sole soother of this vile despair.

—Arthur Rimbaud, “Phrases

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