Issue Seventy-one, October 2015

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Where’s the Best BBQ in This Town?, Matthew Myers
“There’s a little shack of a place with bars over the windows and all the lights out. Park in the back near the pile of old Christmas trees. Watch your step. The asphalt’s like waves. If you become disoriented, look up and try to find familiar stars through the sodium lights. There will be nothing but a swirl of yellow-glazed bugs. Despair and then strengthen yourself.”

Nothing Contributes So Much to Tranquilize the Mind as a Steady Purpose, Brian D. Morrison
“Frankenstein’s creature tried sincerely to be / machine but could be only problem. He wind- / milled his arms tilling dirt, rocks and clumps / flying. Seed from his hands fell perforce.”

Fingers, Shannon Noel Brady
“The purple monkey hugs my kneecap with his armpit. Squashed into my front is the yellow dinosaur, her spinal ridges prickling my belly every time she shifts. The blue elephant’s hindquarters press against my ear, which is unpleasant, but not as much as the child’s face flattened against the glass.”

Paper Cities, Michael Berkowitz
“the light of creation was the soft glow / of the lamp outside”

A Taste of Fame, Chad Schuster
“Before she was in your living room she was my girlfriend. She lived at the edge of a nature preserve in a cabin overwhelmed by trees. She inherited the place from her father, a man who raised chickens and rolled his own smokes and chopped wood for sport, as if the perfect cut would bring back the wife who’d lost her mind and left him alone to care for their young daughter.”

Cover art: Weed, Jakub Gazmercik