ISSUE 3 // Prose
visual art by Deborah Dendler, Fajr Alam, Randi Ward & Gilmore Tamny
"Burning Desire" by Fajr Alam
ARI LAUREL // A MONK DURING PEACETIME
hybrid
"I don't know the feeling. I don't actively seek the feeling. Enlightenment is a $1.50 taco in the middle of the night."
RUPERT FIKE // TUTORING MOHAMMED MOHAMMED
hybrid
"in this still moment it no longer / matters how disparate our worlds are– / our dreams are common– we both want to be / the swimming man in that picture"
ROBERT VIVIAN // LAST MINUTE CONTRIBUTOR
hybrid
"RV loves his wife’s hair spilled out across the pillow in the wild abandon of sleep and Danish dreams"
"After the Bath" by Deborah Dendler
LIZZ HUERTA // THE END OF MY DAYS OF SAINTHOOD
non-fiction
"He asked where my boyfriend was, I told him I was celibate. He raised an eyebrow and asked if I was a saint."
CHRIS CAMPANIONI // LOVE STORIES FROM THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY CAUGHT ON FILM
hybrid
"Something has been left out, but I don’t know what. A wipe, change of scene, sound of rainfall to match each pearl of rain, the passage of time."
JULIET KINDER // A POEM
ABOUT FAT
fiction
"He will read it to me later in bed and then forgive me and undo my bra. I will wake up with his new poem scrawled all over me. Repetitions of the word ‘callous’ on the inside of my thighs."
"Meyegraine 85" by Randi Ward
JAKE MAYNARD //
BEFORE YOU BUY THE FARM
fiction
"It was most like watching the does in the meadow at sundown licking the flattened nests where their fawns had been."
ZVEZDANA RASHKOVICH //
THE TEA MAKER
hybrid
"She rises next to a child’s body that’s still warm, his breath / hot on her face, scented with milk from her breast. It’s time for tea, she knows, and the child is only a dream."
KAREN GARRISON //
BY SUNDOWN
fiction
"She’s the one who steals his tomatoes while he sleeps and worse, his memory."
JESSICA LANAY // FOOT WASHING
fiction
"There was a subtle fear that whoever she remembered me as last would be who I was stuck with forever. She was the last root I could track myself by."
"Three Graces" by Deborah Dendler
Untitled by Ashley Parker Owens
CARLOS AUGUSTO BELINI DE GOIS //
SEVEN STEPS TO LIVE SEVEN DAYS
hybrid
"I can still feel the unison of the cycles, and how we had to hold each other’s hands as to not be struck by the pressure."
MELISSA LEWIS-ACKERMAN // SEVENTY
non-fiction
"He’s oblivious to the way I watch him as he moves his hands roughly across the page, or into the air, motioning with the movement of his mouth when he pauses to think about dialogue."
"thirty + two (patterns)" by Gilmore Tamny
SHOSHANA SARAH // NOT ON THE MAP
(class notes on place)
hybrid
"I tried to bait the hook— / instead, / I became the bait and I had to get stitches. / I still have a scar on my right index finger."