Mister Average or, A Properly Forged Sword Eric P. Mueller __________ Silence, rare on the football field, usually occurs with gasps, like after the hardest collisions, or, in a moments of loss when the team scores, a player is injured, or you lose the game. That’s probably why my silence…
Read MoreAlex Wells Shapiro For Alaina Getzenberg, Charlotte Observer Reporter __________ An Ekphrastic Fable about Construction Workers’ Breakless 8 Hour Effort to Remove a Racist Owner Strapped under the pits, bronzed Jerry Richardson flies away, sloppily offering a football by the nose to passerbys pausing at the spectacle like Jesus’s limp…
Read MoreConcussion Zachary Hughes __________ The weight sits just above, just behind my eyes, Not throbbing or jabbing at me sharply— It just pulls—makes my eyes and head want to sink down— If someone told you to hit your head against the wall over and over, Would you do it? What…
Read MoreWith the Intent Pablo Piñero Stillmann __________ Things were dicey between her & the boyfriend. I was, I guess, “the other man,” even if I didn’t much feel like one. An evening after wasted hours of pre-season football, the woman took me to a party at her cousin’s place. I…
Read MoreTough 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…
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