Issue 34

  • Issue 34,  Poetry

    Origin Story by Kayla Beth Moore

    Let the waters swarm, She said. And She set the birds to flight and the sea monsters She

    delivered to the deep. Both waters swarmed and She saw that it was good. Let the earth creep,

    She said. Cattle and all crawling things took to the land and the wild animals and the trees and

    the fruits of the trees and the seeds of the fruits of the trees filled the earth, and She saw that it

    was good. Let something very different happen,

  • Issue 34,  Poetry

    Primavera by Kayla Beth Moore

    First there was the void—

    known elsewhere as Chaos,

    which Ovid called a shapeless heap,

    which others know as darkness,

    which still lurks in the creases of things.

    This was the first of all is.

    This shapeless abysm of is

    has at certain times in history

    found people to bother—

    one was Botticelli.

    One day the void stared at Botticelli

    such that Botticelli felt the bluntness

    of its stare like an invisible finger

    pressed against his forehead.

  • Issue 34,  Poetry

    Helen, On Childhood by Elaine Johanson

    Wild grapes grew in a torrent

    above the hill, the vines

    billowing over a wall so old

    my sisters and I could roll

    the stones out with our fingers.

     

    Grapes overfilled our skirts,

    our hands. We peeled

    them with our teeth, held

    the naked globes to our eyes

    to track the climbing sun.

     

    We packed our mouths

    to feel their skins pop

    in a chorus of honey.

  • Issue 34,  Nonfiction

    Regions of Identity by Jeri Griffith

    She is me, twenty-two years old, young, younger than I can imagine being from this vantage point. She’s driving a car down a narrow road, wending her way through the New Hampshire woods. That girl is trying to master a stick shift for the first time. She’s not doing too badly, but on inclines, when the gears don’t catch, she finds herself rolling backwards and gets a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

    My former self is newly married. She blasts the car radio, making pop songs into a soundtrack for her life. Rock me gently.

  • Fiction,  Issue 34

    Walls by Tim Fitts

    Living in one of those fifteen-story domino type apartment buildings on the outskirts of
    Cheongju, South Korea. When I went to bed at night, I could hear screams in the walls. All over
    the apartment. I sometimes walked each floor, one end to the next, listening for reverberations
    against the metal apartment doors, but nothing. No sound at all. Once back in bed, the screams
    kicked up all over again. Men screaming, women screaming, children screaming, like a
    collection of lost souls. I couldn’t tell if the screams resulted from shock, or were begging for
    mercy,