An acorn fell at her feet. She was standing under a spread-out branch an oak tree. A live oak, still bearing its leaves, although now brown and desiccated. The lawn too was sparse and dun colored. Then she saw it—the one point of color standing out in the monochrome of muddy earth and grey tombstones. Green.

Rachel Markell is originally from Tallahassee, FL and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY where she works as a […]

he takes a fist full of boiled peanuts
brown juice swelling under his fingernails
regally goes to work sucking out the pale meat

GARRISON BOTTS lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with his husband of 39 years. His short memoirs and […]

Scores of Manhattanites were fleeing to the suburbs, desperate to escape the city’s descent into financial and moral decrepitude. The general feeling was that the city had passed its heyday and was, like Rome and Philadelphia before it, about to fall. War, plague and a scourge of porno shops would soon consume the land. Such dire predictions, however, didn’t stop hordes of young career aspirants, like myself, from swarming into the city every day, our suitcases packed with little experience and outsized ambitions.

Larew’s poems have appeared widely, most recently in Contemporary American Voices, Poetry South, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily and Best Poetry Online.  His […]

When I turn into twigs now/my sap dives deeper/and the claps/clap louder

R.S. Wren is a writer of fiction hailing from Washington, D.C. His work has previously been published in […]

The Italian game. The knight would come out next. Karlsson smiles to himself, pleased that he was one step ahead of the Grandmaster, rightfully assuming that he would not lead with a Gambit.

…they’re allowed to walk around shirtless with Buddha Bellies or Spare Tires or whatever cute name the Paparazzi gives celebrities who get fat, but when I do it in my house, I’m told to cover up…