Tate Lewis recently graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a double major in English-writing and Religion. He lives […]

I don’t remember exactly how long he waited
but after we moved to Michigan he followed
and almost everyday he watched me cut, plane, sand,
nail, stain, and finish every single piece, in his wool suits,
until I had an urn.

The boy tries to draw his mother now –
busying the drones in her checkered gardening apparels.
He desires to draw it in toto, all –
the nectar, aromas, manures, sweating, in the milieus
his father screaming, “Fuck you!”

Wendy Peterson has a B.A. in Literary Studies from Delaware Valley University. She currently lives on Long Island. […]

Constance flung the ladle against the cast iron pot and a hollow echo and the slosh of dirtied water followed her like footsteps out of the room. She slammed the front door behind her. When her father opened it to search after her, he was only met with an accusation of trees—all straight-spined and unwilling to move out of his sightline. He wouldn’t find her standing at the threshold. He wouldn’t chase her either.

Ewa Mazierska is historian of film and popular music, who writes short stories in her spare time. She […]

It was one in a row of identical doors with identical signs, in front of which sat patients and their relatives. The younger played with their mobile phones, the older amused themselves the old way – by talking. I joined the latter, both on the grounds of my age and inclination. We started with exchanging illnesses and hospital experiences. There was more than a whiff of competition between us, with the grand prix going to the most ill patient.

But what can you do when you’ve ruined the one great love you had because you wanted too much of it? We held out for twelve years before getting horny over nothing, a rock in the sky. The foolishness of human beings respects no boundaries.

Dignity, Beauty and Hope sang.
But when I woke they shattered
Like crystal mosaics of church saints.

Soon, like a trumpet, the sun
Began the chorus of sparrows
And the shouts of flowers.

As he leaned in, his rifle clattered against the floor of the canoe. Crystal reached for it, a motion Bobby interpreted as consent or surrender. He pressed his lips to hers, his tongue poked out and searched for an opening. Crystal could barely feel it. She felt like she was drifting under the tow of a heavy tide, submerged as the waves hissed over her head.