Issue 36

  • Fiction,  Issue 36

    How to Become a Mother

    by Grace Sikorski

    At birth, possess the requisite primary sex organs—one uterus, normally shaped; two ovaries, holding a million or so eggs, which will die off at a rapid rate with every passing year of your life. Tick tock. Tick tock. Start the clock.

    Wear scratchy dresses and aching head bows. Wail as they pierce your soft, soft lobes with diamond studs. Play with baby dolls, kitchen sets, plastic irons, bangles, and glitter. Bask before the light bulb of your Easy-Bake Oven. Serve Ken sugar-spice cookies as he drives along the coast in his convertible beach cruiser. 

  • Issue 36

    Prestidigitation

    by David Prather

    The first time I saw magic
                it was in a deck of cards, easy
    as plucking hearts right out of the air.
                I believed in things like Santa Claus
    and God. I tried to find mysteries
                in smoke and mirrors, secrets
    my father kept in his pockets
                and under his hat. He taught me
    how to trick a fish from water,
                refract the light. The next time
    was a vanishing act—my grandfather
               

  • Issue 36,  Poetry

    If You Cry Hard Enough, God Will Answer Your Prayers

    by Jae Eason

    How many times have I prayed in wooden pews &
    the echo of my voice answered?

    They say: drink this,
                               eat this

    and the enzymes in my stomach learn how to break
    down Jesus’ blood & Jesus’ body and if you recite
    your dinnertime prayers, God will give you food and
    let you eat it.

    And you will pray & we will continue to pray.

    Hail Mary, full of grace
    you will recite these words – they’ll web inside your
    throat until the Book has stifled you.

  • Issue 36,  Poetry

    After Thirty Minutes, Dark Adaptation Occurs

    by Emily Townsend

    The sky is rarely clear during spring
    in Willamette Valley, and tonight
    there is a star coruscating

    through the cloudless canvas, as if to say,
    I am still here, please don’t forget I exist
    Earlier, daffodils were drunk with rain.

    I am your backpack as you fall
    asleep. I watch this asterism burn
    and dim like a stagnant plane, fixated
    yet moving as our planet orbits. I assume

    this is the only thing alive in the dark.
    You snore loud enough to wake up
    the horizon,

  • Issue 36,  Poetry

    Broken Glass and Other Sharp Objects

    by Genevieve Creedon

    Paring knife meets plastic meets
    index finger amid kitchen preparations
    for tomorrow’s chicken pasta salad lunch:

    red dyes soft fabric in dim lights
    during efforts to contain the stain,
    blood meets counter meets

    tongue and then water, washing it away.
    But blood washes better than brooding
    erupting in tomorrow’s chicken pasta salad lunch:

    recollection, rising, unleashed,
    in the corner of the living room,
    a wandering eye meets cardboard meets

    boxed remnants of a long past attempt
    to learn to draw—the penciled contours
    of life,

  • Issue 36,  Poetry

    Ark

    by Alex Starr

    We are ever
    ything exploring
    itself ever
    y spelunking
    satellite
    unwrapping of
    a gift
    discover
    y of calculus
    quarks crème
    brûlée
    a lei
    around a neck
    introspection
    specks


    Alex Starr is a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alex's poems appear in Vallum, Three Rooms Press: Maintenant, Lunch Ticket, Ignatian Literary Magazine, La Piccioletta Barca,