Issue Ninety-six, December 2017

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Villa de Leyva, Michael Royce
“An iguana, swollen to the size of a dog, navigates riverstone-cobbled streets; lines between the real and magic blur. Early-risers pay no notice to the bulging cheeks and crenellated forehead of the prehistoric reptile as it lumbers on abbreviated legs around and beside them.”

The Monster Bazaar, Louis Wenzlow
“Your barnacled seashell eyes / bludgeon the landscape. // Your elbow reflexes / only one way.”

Chick, Emily Livingstone
“My brother and I climb into the hutch with the new turkey chicks. It’s our job to wipe the blood off their beaks, if there is any. If we don’t, Dad says, the other chicks will gang up and peck the bloody ones to death.”

References, Jason Peck
“He sets the pen aside. He searches for a moment in his own life where love was strong enough to hurt him. He wonders if he himself can boast of a transgression-free background — intentional or otherwise — that the lives in his files cannot.”

Cover art: Panic, June Eccles-Locke