Art by Ana Prundaru

by Madison Ellingsworth

I wear a baggy shirt and baggy jeans to Sophie’s housewarming party because that’s what I saw all the attractive Korean and Japanese tourists wearing while working at Gilbert’s Chowder House this week, and now that I’m off the clock I can wear whatever clothes I want, which really means I can look bad in different clothes from the black leggings and black v-neck top I wore working at Gilbert’s, which now stink like scallops.

Everybody at the party is wearing trendy corset tops and Adam Sandler shorts and tennis skirts,

Art by Monica Banks

Ars Poetica w/Oxygen Tank

a slow gesture at first      I start w/my sad girl face    Mama’s wan smile
that boys fall for     the coldness of her waves     the sheer drop
of my eight-year-old chilly prophecy    not knowing better    I jump into Sister’s burning lake    
grabbing her wrists    oxygen tank on my back     exit plan in place      every single time
 it hurt to watch     Sister surrender whatever     loss of tongue     in the shape of a gun
or was it a ballpoint swept from her hand      &

art by the author

by Erin Allen

AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY       of my husband’s business trip, my son asks why we haven’t
been to church in forever, but Lord, I am not ready to go into it, especially with my partner
halfway around the world, so I tell the kids we’re gonna do church at home. I pull out the
Children’s Bible, read the one about three wise men, only I change it to three wise
people because I want so badly for the book to be inclusive that I’ll change the story to get us there.

by Daniel Webre

On another day at the zoo, not this one, I had the place almost to myself. I even had my own private animal show. On this day, however, things were different. I was hurrying along until I got to the foxes. There was a red fox with a white coat who intrigued me. She was there as before, but on this day I left the fox enclosure to investigate an unfamiliar noise. The caged-in area next door looked similar to the one I’d just left. It took a moment of scanning the interior before I could locate the source of the noise.

photo by KJ Hannah Greenberg

by Joseph Phelan

We emerged from the lobby’s glacial climate, man and dog, to stroll along the offramp knolls—
heeding nature’s call. Addled thoughts dissolved into purpling dusk and twenty-one hindleg salutes. Crossing the soft green berm into a maze of silent side streets, we’re drawn like moths toward truculent lighting.

Nearly the last night of spring, Ohio air, floral and mossy, alive with possibility and rhyming with the wag of a loping white tail, we follow that persistent snout—confident in its quest for goose droppings in the dark.