Where is the Answer? Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg __________ Is it in the speech of the streetlight,so determined to streak its starof orange insistence in the fog? Is it wherever the hummingbird goesto stillness on a perch in the forestacross the street from the old houses? Or is it the houses themselves,…
Read MoreJohn Grey __________ Submitting We could all send blood,a few drops of the red stuffin a tiny corked tube.But how would the editorisolate the worthy from the doggerel?Not a pound of flesh.Editors aren’t Shylocks.But maybe an ounce or two.Like a little fingersevered from the hand.Any editor with a half-way decent…
Read MorePost-Modern Polonius Anne Babson __________ “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell” – William ShakespearePolonius stabbed behind tapestry — But audiences don’t mourn his murder.Hackneyed speeches are the real travesty. Today, when prose is cannon fodder,“There is nothing outside the text.” It bores,Bereft of meaning, say Doctors.The musings of the sage…
Read MoreThere’s a Strand Dustin Radke __________ There’s a strand of uncurly hair that weaveditself through your bandana and fell just tothe right of your smile. Not to be too poetic,but it disobeyed the river of your hair and ledme straight to your smile, and now I miss you.I wonder how…
Read MoreBoudin 2022 Editors: Michael Horner and Mayank Machanda Johanna Barbier, “A Strand,” digital SFX Fiction “Everybody’s Everybody” by Brady Achterberg “#CoronaLife” by Terena Elizabeth Bell “When Mama Was a Moth” by Nick Caccamo “HIGHWAY 111” by Matthieu Cailler “Upon Returning From a Leadership Convention in Hawaii, the Superintendent Addresses the…
Read MoreKeep Times Good (Or the League to Save the Good Times) Joe Farley __________ Rex liked to have a good time. Rex liked to ensure everyone else was having a good time. Rex liked to keep times good. He played the towns centennial party. He played the townie bars, the…
Read MoreThe Boyfriend Benjamin Selesnick __________ The dining room was one of the larger rooms in Noah’s Atlantic-facing colonial. It had a vaulted ceiling, a glassed-encased display at one end of the cedar-cut table that held a collection of plaques and trophies he’d accrued over the past decade working as the…
Read MoreOver the Edge Rebecca L. Monroe __________ “You ready?” He looked up, tightening his harness, helmet in place. He was slim, tanned with blonde hair bleached by the summer sun. He was a poster picture for an outdoors man. “Yes.” Alice replied, breath short as she finished adjusting her leg…
Read MoreTwo Lone Voices Aubrey Lozano-Cofield __________ It’s the rain after five years of drought in Texas. The water stitches up the cracked earth and I don’t want to disturb it. I want it to know it’s welcome, that the South is thirsty. “Can you taste the salt?!” she asks me,…
Read MoreHIGHWAY 111 Mathieu Cailler __________ Even at 11:59 p.m., the heat still owned Palm Springs. Emile’s shift had started a couple of hours earlier, and he sat in his taxicab, munching on some stale donut holes, waiting for dispatch to inform him of his next pick-up. He tinkered with the…
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