The Cover of Issue 26.

Spring 2022

Issue 26

Our twenty-sixth issue is haunted, alcohol-soaked, possibly delusional, bathed in moonlight, wandering through forests and caverns, and inflamed by all-manner of approaching catastrophes.

Featuring new short fiction, poetry, CNF, and translations from Alberto Ortiz De Zarate (translated by Whitni Battle), Darlene Eliot, Nara Vidal (translated by Emyr Humphreys), Luna Sicat-Cleto (translated by Bernard Capinpin), Suzana Stojanović, Siamak Vossoughi, Marshall Moore, Farhad Pirbal (translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse and Jiyar Homer), James Miller, Michele Kilmer, Olga Krause (translated by Grace Sewell), John Rey Dave Aquino, John M. Kuhlman, Michael Garcia Bertrand, Benjamin Niespodziany, Lisa Williams, Anna B. Sutton, Sharron Hass (translated by Marcela Sulak), and Steve Davenport. Cover art by Zee Zee.

The Golden Hops

Alberto Ortiz De Zarate
Translated by Whitni Battle

“With glazed eyes he stared fixedly at his glass mug, which looked so bright, and kept getting brighter as he watched his old yearnings and memories floating up to the surface in those minute amber bubbles, sometimes intense and sometimes colorless, just like his very existence.”

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The Woman in the Murder House

Darlene Eliot

“Octavia watched the onscreen car chase and shifted in her plastic chair. The chair, bolted to a desktop, was designed for wiry college students, not an eighty-two-year-old woman with abundant hips, long legs, and the impulse to gesture dramatically.”

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Sunday in the Woods

Benjamin Niespodziany

“Her cloak is earth and science. His skin is myth and bear. In each of her pockets, she keeps leaves, seeds, stems, friends. He has no pockets and this makes him sad.”

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Excerpt from Eva

Nara Vidal
Translated by Emyr Humphreys

“It was vitally important I calm my father down. I betrayed the dismay in my eyes as I announced, yet again, that my mother was dead and that I had come home to a house that was hers forever.”

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Buffalo

Siamak Vossoughi

“Look at me, he thought, an Iranian man in the middle of this America. Wandering through town after the thing is over and the battle lost.”

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The First Ghost I Ever Saw Was

Marshall Moore

“A darkness had always surrounded our house. Locked boxes, empty rooms. Secrets hinted at, but never discussed. My sister (we’ll call her J.) and I were characters in our own ghost story as it played out in the modern manor house in the country-club suburbs.”

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The Lion

Farhad Pirbal
Translated by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse and Jiyar Homer

“That’s it then. This is my life now: always this cold and wretched wandering from this little room to the rooftop and from the rooftop back inside, like a prisoner.”

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Woodwork

James Miller

“Mitch makes each finger in the garage. He takes a block of cheap Home Depot pine and carves out the shape of pointing. I like to say they’re all index, homing for the Forms.”

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Ode to Zheka

Olga Krause
Translated by Grace Sewell

“Of course, poetry’s good for nothing. Rich people chew on it, but they’re already full. As for the rest of us, well, read a poem to your grumbling belly and see what good it does you!”

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Padre de Familia

John Rey Dave Aquino

“His father knelt and held his shoulders with both hands, looking at him from head to toe, his large hands growing heavy on Lyon’s shoulders. Uneasy under his father’s stare, Lyon observed his father in return.”

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Moon Talk

Steve Davenport

“Here on the moon things are boring.
Gray as dumbbells or November,
as snow chains or the machete
I forgot at home. Never mind”

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Excerpt from Dictionary

John M. Kuhlman

“neph·ew \ʹne-(ͺ)fyü\ n. 1. A human skeleton that has been unearthed by a burrowing dog, often in an unexpected location, such as a vacant lot or beneath the soil of a neighbor’s yard.”

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Gospel of Mary

Michael Garcia Bertrand

“In the middle of determining whether two multivariate polynomials were indistinguishable, Judas Borges discovered he was Jesus Christ.”

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