August 19—
I have this dream, that I’ll leave town and you’ll choose that moment to return. And so I leave these notes, saying hey, I’m at the lake, you remember the one. It’s never a question, I know you remember. We argued over the color of the water. […]
Tearing open plastic baggies with a hotel pen, Laden laces the running bath with fragrant stolen compounds. Gem-like powders and fungal dusts sift downward through steam. Dark versus light, a paisley sparkle snake-fight spins on the surface of the water as substances clash and combine. […]
When the train rattled, the bones in the mahogany box at Alva’s side rattled back. It sounded as if the two were in conversation, parsing out where each was headed. The thwock and click of calcium matched the grind of rusted rails beneath them, slow and predictable. […]
When you’re already dead inside, Jack thinks, it shouldn’t be possible for anything to make you feel worse. The sight of that cottage, though—clinging to the foot of a lumpen hill amid acres of dead, wasted bog, its white paint smeared and stained with moss— […]
Thanks to our patrons for supporting this issue: Kelly, Bear Weiter, Jessica Guptill, Maria Haskins, Elise Tobler, Julie Ireland, Alan Mark Tong, Lowry Poletti, Julie Stevens, Kevin Casin, Michael Glyde, Michelle Muenzler
