Issue Six
The Fish
You hear a commotion upstairs climb up from the basement find your mother and a strange man cursing and batting the air a leaf-green sleek-fat fish undulates through the air shining and languorous serenely plump two more fish escape their cardboard box, circumnavigate...
One of a Kind
The foot was perfectly preserved and why wouldn’t it be having been encased in the region’s worst ice storm in a century, its secrets buried beneath months of snow. Things go missing that time of year: mittens, socks, late-born calves that lose their way. Spring thaw...
Three Poems by Simon Perchik
* You glance the way fishermen aim then cast their nets and though the camera will struggle it’s the sea that needs mending :another chance at how much longer in the embrace corners will form for a photograph already in fear –nothing moves where what will come and...
Notes on the Main Text
The morning stole upon the day and I woke up cheated, the extra hour gone. The narrative takes place in late October; in the United Kingdom, towards the end of this month, clocks are set back one hour in accordance with Greenwich Mean Time, marking also the end of...
Breakroom
Billy puts his “next teller please” sign up and goes to lunch because he can see the men putting on ski masks through the glass door, and at the morning meeting Shirley told him he’d better start paying more attention to his work, so screw her. He goes back to the...
Christina Allen’s Death
At the school gates, the news of Christina Allen's death had been met with great shock and even greater speculation, for the circumstances of her passing had not been disclosed. Later on, at the book club, the three women take a break from drinking wine to discuss the...
We Walk the Downtown
We wander the downtown, boarded up and abandoned except for the Greek diner at College and the newsstand across the street. We look at magazines, starting with the British music papers, reading up on bands no one heard of in this fading tourist town where nothing...
Bluebell’s Last Flight
When Bluebell was ten she tied thirty red balloons to her back, stood on the roof of the shed, spread her arms like wings and took off over the world. She wrote a story about her flight and everything she saw. When the teacher read it she caned Bluebell for copying...
Un-Pinocchio
When I was a boy, I told my parents I wanted to become Pinocchio. That made my parents mad because they said then I’d have a craving to become a real boy and I already was one. I didn’t understand the anger. It’s not like they wanted to kill me or anything. It was...
Con Amore
You stick the key in the mailbox. “Did you get it today?” Amelia shouts this from the second floor, across your apartment complex’s courtyard. Your sister waves, leaning heavy against the railing. You find two envelopes in the box: a credit card bill and the letter...
Miserere
Miserere mei, have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness. In your great compassion, in your great compassion, in your great compass, in your great...grandfather. Your great-grandfather came to bring us avocados yesterday. The day the avocados came he...
Warehouse
I could hear them calling my name from the truck bay. Orders were piling up, the customers, pissed. I often hid out in the loft to write poetry; other times to avoid work. This time was different: I had a rash all over my face and neck. Not just any rash, mind you. It...
anatomy of a burning thing
The city never slept but its nights and days sounded different. The days were bright and burning and belonging to the masses; the nights, a cacophony, were his, the cars passing outside, shattered glass windows in back alleys, wild cats climbing on dumpsters, nails...
I Forced a Bot to Watch Over 1,000 Hours of a Poet Writing a Poem and Then Asked It to Write a Script of a Poet Writing a Poem
A POET, sitting at their desk, opens a Word Document. Inside the Word Document there is Social Media. The POET stares at the Social Media, which stares into the POET. The POET waves their arms like a cloud hunting sparrows. Can you believe people believe in God all...
Stack the Deck
If you tracked mud in her house, there’d be hell to pay. I called her Grandma Candy Corn. In my head. Her teeth were three shades of yellow, worse by the gums. Some were loose, she’d flick with her tongue after she got done with a hot scolding. I wasn’t her favorite....
Press Conference: Washington, D.C.
Senator Minotaur thinks of the only boy he kissed, the one who wanted to fly and eventually did. The Senator remembers the sea salt on the boy's neck, the boy's hands on the small of the Senator's back after, a goodbye before the boy attempted his escape from their...
Got Your Nose
The first time Jack’s Uncle Frank “got his nose,” Jack was disturbed to say the least. He immediately brought both of his hands up to his face to feel if it was still there and it seemed like it was. But Uncle Frank said he “got it” and adults aren’t supposed to lie....