Tough Call Dave Malone __________ When my father reffed high school football games, he kept a mental log of epithets the fans yelled and shared the best over Schlitz with his newspaper buddies on our patio. It was mostly laughs except for the occasional telling after a six-pack of the…
Read MoreTecmo Bowl Days Matt Rector __________ before the spastic torment of middle school when an erection was just an uncomfortable oddity and the television had a dial and wood paneling we lost a summer to this game backs hunched thumbs fast legs folded on the floor inside our parents’ living…
Read MoreAll Football: Dec ’20 Editor: Chris Lowe Letter from the Editor by Chris Lowe Fiction “Hash Marked” by Jordan Escobar “The Unexpected Dryness of a Lemon Poppy Scone” by Jacob Ginsberg “Mascot” by Beth McMurray Four Fables by Alex Wells Shapiro Poetry “Double-Sonnet in Race” by Prince Bush Four Poems…
Read MoreBoudin 2020 Fiction “to patch,” “to atrophy,” & “to flip” by Tyler Barton “Winter with Periwinkle” by Redfern Boyd “The Sound of Silence” by Amanda Hays “Encounter” by Benjamin Kessler “Leaving Leaf River” by Hannah Kroonblawd Poetry “From the Labor Café in Warsaw” by Jeffrey Alfier “Earnest Postcard,” “Bird’s-Eye View,”…
Read Moreis it too tender to kiss? Hannah Rousselot __________ I.in the past, i always held my wounds outgaping and red, hoping someone would noticeand want to kiss me better. many tried, but none could re-knitmy skin, my heart, my brain togetherwith strands from their own body.i had to do it…
Read MoreWhat Fancied Her Rikki Santer __________ If a toilet seat can be a lyre& applause stored in a box then this is the story of a believer—your closet in the candy-colored language of clown—you witha pimiento center & comfortable as a sock, never ruffled or lacybut blooming in tie-dye spider…
Read MoreCourt Castaños __________ Burn Rising Yesterday, Blake asked me, what are you doingwith your hands today? I opened them, read:too clean, too dry. And remembered thesehands, just seven years old,aimed for his eye, glasses and all, sockedit red, puffed, like a burn rising.Blake Gollmer, my best friend, and his betrayal:an…
Read MoreEsteban Rodríguez __________ Throw Down With rumors in every room,you learn who wants to throw downwith who, that tomorrow,or the next day or the next,you will face an enemy you didn’t knowyou had. And so, you go home,raid your mother’s jewelry box,put on every ring she owns,and in your room,…
Read MoreSeth Simons __________ Winter Sonnet But wait. I’m not an ornithologist.You’ve never lost your hat in Lake Erieor come to hate your friend one restlessAugust in a corn maze in Kentucky. Last Christmas we poured whiskey into snowpacked wooden bowls and ate it with a spoon.Your lips were cold blue…
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