death
  • Riley Morsman

Sometimes I Think About Death and it Kills Me
Sometimes I Think About Death and it Kills Me 1281 1920 Riley Morsman

As I stand in the shower and watch morning slither in through the milky window, I think about death. I think about it over and over again, my mind turning…
  • Aaron Housholder

Mud Crusted
Mud Crusted 1920 1360 Aaron Housholder

Under the white dresser near the closet in our master bathroom, surrounded by an impressive collection of dust bunnies, sits a pair of women’s shoes. The shoes are brown low-top…
  • Kevin Richard White

Barn Fire, 1985
Barn Fire, 1985 1920 1440 Kevin Richard White

Back in October 1985, I woke up to the horses screaming. My parents weren’t home – they were spending the last of their paychecks line dancing and whiskey-tasting. They could…

The Purported Last Words of Ruth Blay
The Purported Last Words of Ruth Blay 1920 930 Erin Emily Ann Vance

Tell me where I’ll be hanged. The elm? The gallows? The balcony of my lover’s home? Don’t let my students watch, don’t let the girls see. I haven’t yet taught…
  • Tara Isabel Zambrano

The Fortune Teller
The Fortune Teller 1920 1920 Tara Isabel Zambrano

Mother touches their face and blinks like Morse code. No one understands her. I translate and do the readings for our tribe. Sometimes she picks up her stick and hits…
  • Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Ghazal with reference to Sylvia Plath
Ghazal with reference to Sylvia Plath 1920 1319 Sneha Subramanian Kanta

A part of your body ached, the doctor pressed it. Said—fine here, take these, Sylvia. But you replaced the pills with music. Fine. You knew enough to be a woman,…
  • Todd Smith

Apologia, America
Apologia, America 1920 1440 Todd Smith

Listen: it’s raining ash. The one holding his nose tight in blueish kleenex is your dead neighbor’s only certified son,   heir to eleven thumbs and a language made of…
  • Hannah Grieco

The Coffin Club
The Coffin Club 1920 1193 Hannah Grieco

We heard about it on the radio Sunday morning: Older people in New Zealand were forgoing book groups in favor of coffin clubs. They were learning carpentry and reminding themselves…
  • Angela M. Shupe

Home
Home 1920 1080 Angela M. Shupe

Rose petals lie open to the wind. Vibrant fuchsia has faded to a soft blush, the color now muted of its former vitality. A few petals have fallen and now…
  • Justin Briley

Hunter
Hunter 1283 968 Justin Briley

She is serenity. A portrait fixed with a face like the Middle Pacific; cold and beckoning. As the frosted dirt cracks beneath my small feet, beneath layers of dead corn…
  • Asher

Toy Box
Toy Box 2500 1406 Asher

A Note from the Editor: Many of the photographs you will see in this issue are from Asher — no last name, simply as is. Asher is a sculptor from…

To Lie With Silence
To Lie With Silence 1280 1920 Jamie A. Hughes

This dewdrop world— Is a dewdrop world, And yet, and yet… —Kobayashi Issa * Every night before sleep, I turn on a fan. Sometimes multiple ones. Ceiling and bedside. Pedestal…
  • Brennan Sprague

Cartilage, An Elegy
Cartilage, An Elegy 1920 1080 Brennan Sprague

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. -Kurt Vonnegut Our separate selves whiplashed into twin stupors when we finally found your lost dog—her wet tongue sunk in the crater of this…

Buried in the Ground
Buried in the Ground 2500 1406 L.N. Holmes

There are few things your dad can do that will surprise you, but sending your cat back to the shelter and claiming to bury a bunch of money in the…

Death of a Box
Death of a Box 2000 1125 R.E. Hengsterman

A determined fog on the windshield tested the Volvo’s defrost, and its lack of motivation, as did the rain on the wipers, and the hectic speed, which took much of…
  • Priyanka Sacheti

A Girl Buys Lilies for Herself
A Girl Buys Lilies for Herself 2500 1406 Priyanka Sacheti

She knows that there is something wrong with her when there have been no flowers in her house for weeks. The air smells of uninhabited hearts and crushed moths and…

The Halfway House
The Halfway House 1920 1280 Emma Sloley

This man, Tom Goodnough, looked guilty as he slunk along, but that was how he always looked even when he’d done nothing wrong. His facial features didn’t help: flatline of…
  • Sally Thomas

Spiders in the Fall
Spiders in the Fall 2500 1406 Sally Thomas

Dara’s house was old and porous. In September, in the waning warm days, the spiders claimed it for their own. They loved the north side of the house, where the…
  • Emily Osborne

Sharp Parables
Sharp Parables 2500 1406 Emily Osborne

Children hear of water-hoardings. Lorelei floating gold cups, coaxing gullible girls down. Ancient cities settled by kelp and shells. Rivers refusing tossed-in shoes, certain that boys thought dead are somewhere…

Coyote Road and Inner and Outer Geographies
Coyote Road and Inner and Outer Geographies 1920 1280 Brian Michael Barbeito

The infrastructure is sound, the demarcation lines on the roads clear and new, and the curbs and their boulevards handsomely curt and reliable. But it’s a bore. And it’s a…

At the Hair Salon
At the Hair Salon 1900 1069 Chanel Brenner

A boy slumps sideways in a wheelchair, a breathing tube attached to his mouth like an umbilical cord. Riley could have been him if he had lived. The boy wears…
  • Damien B. Donnelly

Carried Away on the Water
Carried Away on the Water 3837 2607 Damien B. Donnelly

From the nightmare we wake to the dream before we open our eyes to reality I fear I fret I freeze I forge I face I forget I love you,…

Road Gators
Road Gators 1200 675 Cole Meyer

I dream about an accident: Jackie and Kyle and I in the car, the car upside down and Jackie hanging limp beside me. My ears are ringing. Sirens and screams…
  • Julie Rea

Rattle
Rattle 1920 1440 Julie Rea

I taped flyers to the maple trees that lined both sides of the street. Your gap-toothed smile stared back at me, crooked school tie, and favourite pink bow. I only had one…
  • Tiffany Sciacca

Come September
Come September 2500 1406 Tiffany Sciacca

We will still walk hand in hand, talking each other down from our brittle edges and I will wonder if my mother’s blood has finally gone bad beneath the skin.…
  • Afopefoluwa Ojo

This boy saw something in fire
This boy saw something in fire 1920 1440 Afopefoluwa Ojo

October 13th, 1966 Carl Wisconsin c/o Nipost 711 Nulla St. Mankato Mississippi Dear Carl, I found your address in the name-change section of a foreign newspaper. But asides the section…
  • Amee Nassrene Broumand

History & the Doomed
History & the Doomed 2000 1125 Amee Nassrene Broumand

Curb corners accumulate dandelions, cigarettes, & skeletons, compliments of the whirlwind as it keens through errant sunbeams. Antennae twitch at smashed gears. I nudge a broken spider with my toe,…

De Consolatione ad Kamil: On Death
De Consolatione ad Kamil: On Death 2500 1406 Kamil Ahsan

I was three years old, the youngest of three, when my father passed away in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. I have no recollection of him. Any remainders are memories of memories, or…
  • Meeah Williams

What We Talked About the Last Time We Talked About Anything
What We Talked About the Last Time We Talked About Anything 2500 1406 Meeah Williams

Across a tiny white square of table, your friend Joanie is slowly dying, although neither of you is supposed to know that just yet. She is wearing an exultant silk…
  • Chimeka Garricks

Hurt
Hurt 1000 750 Chimeka Garricks

Your mother starts crying when Dami turns up for his funeral. He is fashionably late. You expect this. You also expect him to overdo his entrance, but you are still…
  • Aaron Housholder

In Vain
In Vain 3024 4032 Aaron Housholder

I’m lying in the ditch, bleeding. My son has died. I can’t move, can’t climb. I will never be the same. I will never be the same. I hear you…

I Will Not Waste You
I Will Not Waste You 1656 2208 Katelyn Delvaux

The pink of your thighs folding in is the conch I hold to my mouth and the soft curve of your body a bell to my ear. Sickness washes in…

The Beetle
The Beetle 2796 2448 Rebecca Kokitus

all broken and yellow as antique things tend to be there is beauty in oxidation, in the elements eating through metal like larvae         through leaf the smell…
  • Megan Neville

It’s Just That Sometimes I Feel Trapped
It’s Just That Sometimes I Feel Trapped 1449 720 Megan Neville

He refuses to eat vegetables from our garden, says nothing grown half a mile from a steel mill can be safe. What about me, then? But I, I refuse to…
  • Lydia Durunguma

Death is the Color White
Death is the Color White 3543 2370 Lydia Durunguma

“Your lips are a door, your mind is the key.” Those words your mother whispered to you scream louder in your head than her ensuing screeches as they placed the…

Dead Leaves
Dead Leaves 2763 1414 Erin Emily Ann Vance

After Remedios Varo If I do not tell you of the lichen growing on the living room floor will you feel it on the soles of your feet? What of…

At a Restaurant the Night My Son Died
At a Restaurant the Night My Son Died 1920 1152 Chanel Brenner

I sat across from him, shooting his portrait with my phone. His charcoal sweatshirt faded into the dark booth. He played tic-tac-toe in the dim light. I should have known…

hecate #1
hecate #1 3264 2448 Katherine DeCoste

undeath is in creation / and the degloving of hands / digging up of pale yellow talisman / kiss of moonlight through the willow branches / fade / d /…

The Wind Plays Tricks On Me In September
The Wind Plays Tricks On Me In September 1920 1440 Elisabeth Horan

Long are the rhythms of pain in the fall– Single leaves upon the wind float then flip, I assume them dead kin: a tree frog a thrush a red squirrel…
  • Krikor N. Der Hohannesian

At the 50th
At the 50th 3024 2973 Krikor N. Der Hohannesian

Harvard College Reunion, Class of 1958 Adrift between symposia and seminars, a drizzle of reverie on Bow Street, aimless nostalgia graying in droplets of fog. At the corner of Arrow…

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