Tonight John Brantingham __________ It’s 2ambefore I noticethe snow in the streetlight coming downin fat wet flakes.It’s an inch thick on the road, and no one’sdriven this way yet.Sirens are whining and so far from methat they’re soft as birdsong.The blue light of my neighbor’s televisionis playingoff his curtains. I…
Read MoreA Typical Day in the Life of Love JC Reilly __________ Love crawls from a holelike a mouse in the pantry;beware its droppings. Love seeks its shadow behind its back but can’t turn fast enough to see. Love hangs its sheet ona line in the morning sun.It snaps with the…
Read MoreSagittarius A* Rohan Buettel __________ There is a hole in the heart of my galaxy;supermassive and black; no light emitsin any event from below the horizon.It sits in the snowy wastes of the Milky Way,dense with star clusters and interstellar nebulae.The absence keeps growing —no matter how much falls in,…
Read MoreWhere 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 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 More“Boo”din: It Came from the Swamp, Oct ’22 Poetry Editor: Rachel Pittman Fiction Editor: Abbie Skinner Victoria de Benedicty, “Swamp Girl” (2022), oil paint and oil pastel Fiction “Dear Anonymous Cryptid Photographer” by William Hawkins “nothing to fear” by M. Caroline McMaulay “Summer Love” by Cassondra Windwalker Poetry “Feu-Follet” by…
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 MoreEverything Lynne Schmidt __________ A husband hears of his family’s death when their bodies make the front page of American newspapers. He recognizes their clothes, their luggage, before the jagged knife of realization sets in. And then he recognizes his wife, his daughter, his son, his dogs. He cries, “They…
Read More