Issue 37
-
Among Rooms and Other Arrangements
by Nathaniel Eddy
unknown (late 1700s-early 1800s)
Mitchell appeared at my door like one of those summer storms that blows in swift, unexpected. Dark clothing, hair like a blanket of slanting rainfall. I had taken the day to stay home and practice self-care which meant I’d remained in bed looking at the internet. News headlines and social media feeds, articles about moon bathing, intentionality, the endless therapy memes. I had been watching a video about breathing techniques when Mitchell knocked and told me that Francine had asked him to leave. He said this in the way of someone under anesthesia: thick,
-
Pocket God
by T.J. Martinson
art by Odilon Redon, 1882
Your Pocket God stopped eating last week. For the first few days, it was easy enough to excuse the way it pushed away each offering of raisins like a fussy toddler, but now, eight days later, excuses are hard to come by. Still you try.
“It’s probably just a spiritual fast,” you tell your dad during breakfast as you anxiously hold your starving, gaunt Pocket God, watching it turn over weakly in your palm.
You hope your father will agree that there’s nothing to worry about,
-
The Green Man of Akron
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.
-
Historical Homes of Currituck County
by Jessica Payne
drawing by Charles Henry Alston, 1935–43
We were discussing countertops when our son began to seize in the backseat. I mistook it for something innocent. He was sleeping…dreaming, perhaps. A small twitch of his left leg, like riding a bicycle. “What is he doing” I said. The car became dark as we drove beneath the overpass, when we exited the other side, he was thrashing. You climbed over the console; you repeated his name. I was confused if I should pull over, as if steering the car put us further from the issue at hand.
-
The Elsewhere Oracle
by Michele Battiste
see TOC for art attributions
Green like beginning (leaf primordium)
Green like promise (tangle of snakes)
Green like amulet (scarab’s carapace)
Green like essence (secreted bile)
Green like riddle (hidden katydid)
Green like storm (tornado light)
Green like fortune (emerald vein)
Green like gamble (debtor’s note)
Green like toxin (stem of foxglove)
Green like murk (understory)
Green like monster (from the shoreline)
Green like something soon to come
Oracle
To be superficial is to lack depth, -
Discarded Sermon 9
by Benjamin Bellas
collage by John Bingley Garland, ca. 1850–60
Shhhhhweet sassle-frassle, the good Lord came to me and said, “The only church you need is a freshly sharpened axe and enough breath to reach the forest’s edge.”
2 I bring mine hands and dip them in the marrow of god’s glory, god’s great salivating abundance.
3 I dip mine thighs in spring water, spilled forth from the depths of my mother’s karst body, carried over rock to rock,
