Zee Zee
“I love the carved images on the early Minoan seal stones. They are inscrutable, grotesque. The Mediterranean is my culture and heritage.”
The Gargoyle of the Notre-Dame Cathedral Paris
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Issue 26
Latest Reviews
Featured Interview
Newest Essay
Gospel of Mary
Michael Garcia Bertrand
“In the middle of determining whether two multivariate polynomials were indistinguishable, Judas Borges discovered he was Jesus Christ.”
Excerpt from Dictionary
John M. Kuhlman
“neph·ew \ʹne-(ͺ)fyü\ n. 1. A human skeleton that has been unearthed by a burrowing dog, often in an unexpected location, such as a vacant lot or beneath the soil of a neighbor’s yard.”
The Son of a Bitch of Hope After
Steve Davenport
“The Son of a Bitch of Hope ate
on and off the table, ate
the table, ate the chairs, ate
the keys out the locks, ate
”
Moon Talk
Steve Davenport
“Here on the moon things are boring.
Gray as dumbbells or November,
as snow chains or the machete
I forgot at home. Never mind”
Padre de Familia
John Rey Dave Aquino
“His father knelt and held his shoulders with both hands, looking at him from head to toe, his large hands growing heavy on Lyon’s shoulders. Uneasy under his father’s stare, Lyon observed his father in return.”
Ode to Zheka
Olga Krause
Translated by Grace Sewell
“Of course, poetry’s good for nothing. Rich people chew on it, but they’re already full. As for the rest of us, well, read a poem to your grumbling belly and see what good it does you!”
Excerpts from “Hehasnoname”
Sharron Hass
Translated by Marcela Sulak
“these are not lines of poetry
the poem is soaked in darkness
it moves along the tracks on the other side of words
and it screeches. I hear the screeching.”
Oranges; Charcoal
Michele Kilmer
“We lost the house in May 1982. I hate that term; lost the house. I knew right where it was. Still do.”
My Wife Was Drunk at Hobby Lobby
James Miller
“I asked about Golden Books, for our child. Did she ever read the Hans Brinker one? We couldn’t remember where the death came in.”
Woodwork
James Miller
“Mitch makes each finger in the garage. He takes a block of cheap Home Depot pine and carves out the shape of pointing. I like to say they’re all index, homing for the Forms.”
The Teacher
James Miller
“The teacher woke up one morning and found a dead squirrel stinking up the flowerbed in his front yard.”
The Good Man
James Miller
“The good man wanted to spend quality time with the kid—his wife’s little brother.”
The Lion
Farhad Pirbal
Translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse and Jiyar Homer
“That’s it then. This is my life now: always this cold and wretched wandering from this little room to the rooftop and from the rooftop back inside, like a prisoner.”
Lost Creek Cave
Anna B. Sutton
“The open mouth of it all. I tried
to enter, but decided against it”
The First Ghost I Ever Saw Was
Marshall Moore
“A darkness had always surrounded our house. Locked boxes, empty rooms. Secrets hinted at, but never discussed. My sister (we’ll call her J.) and I were characters in our own ghost story as it played out in the modern manor house in the country-club suburbs.”
Buffalo
Siamak Vossoughi
“Look at me, he thought, an Iranian man in the middle of this America. Wandering through town after the thing is over and the battle lost.”
Iron Cloud
Suzana Stojanović
“Why didn’t you ever tell me to avoid some places?’
‘You wanted to meet the world.’”
I Cloud the Moon
Lisa Williams
“I cloud the moon. All’s condescension,
my thought of what you are becomes”
You Is Not the Room
Lisa Williams
“You is not the room you thought it was,
capacious room for swearing, rambling,
turning, stomping the walls and floors.”
Three Propositions of the White Wind
Luna Sicat-Cleto
Translated by Bernard Capinpin
“But what else could she do? That’s how it was. She was pregnant. Among all the other options, what was best for all would be to let go.”
Excerpt from Eva
Nara Vidal
Translated by Emyr Humphreys
“It was vitally important I calm my father down. I betrayed the dismay in my eyes as I announced, yet again, that my mother was dead and that I had come home to a house that was hers forever.”
Sunday in the Woods
Benjamin Niespodziany
“Her cloak is earth and science. His skin is myth and bear. In each of her pockets, she keeps leaves, seeds, stems, friends. He has no pockets and this makes him sad.”
There are No Salvageable Parts
Benjamin Niespodziany
“Never mind what this has to do with wolves. Somewhere in your absence a cricket is lapping up the snow.”
The Woman in the Murder House
Darlene Eliot
“Octavia watched the onscreen car chase and shifted in her plastic chair. The chair, bolted to a desktop, was designed for wiry college students, not an eighty-two-year-old woman with abundant hips, long legs, and the impulse to gesture dramatically.”
The Golden Hops
Alberto Ortiz De Zarate
Translated by Whitni Battle
“With glazed eyes he stared fixedly at his glass mug, which looked so bright, and kept getting brighter as he watched his old yearnings and memories floating up to the surface in those minute amber bubbles, sometimes intense and sometimes colorless, just like his very existence.”