Issue 22 / Summer 2020 I swallow joy in pill-capsules, two a night, hoping that while I sleep—if I sleep—the joy will seep into the empty cavities of my body and stop my bones from trembling in the morning when my dreams of somewhere else dissolve into the reality of...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 The little girl and boy were screaming. Not the bad screaming. Not Mia’s screaming. Lucretia stood in the outer schoolyard, looking through the fence that separated her from the scene of the crime she had created two months prior. Of all...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 I.Seasonal Vigilance Then, in the beam of the flashlight, there’s a copperhead, dull rust against black pavement, moving, head up. Slow and inefficient, I think; it doesn’t seem like it’s getting anywhere, but it is moving with...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 Pouring myself another cup of coffee, I scanned the letter I’d just pulled from its envelope. “Dearest Melinda, love of my life, salvation of my soul,” it began. This prisoner really was laying it on thick. Five pages of hackneyed declarations...
Issue 21 / Spring 2020 He walks on the cuffs of his pants and the way he clears his country boy throat is an abomination. For someone that I suspect might be an on-the-sly sex worker, you’d think he’d be better at it. There were things I liked—maybe even...
