. . . because you are about to be showered with April awesomeness. The pieces in our seventy-seventh issue vary widely in subject, style, and tone, but each has a title that intrigues the reader without giving too much away.

Steve Sibra’s “My Papa, He Made Me a Frankenstein” sounds wonderfully like a B-horror country song. Who wouldn’t want to know “What You Deserve“? (If it’s this story by Tabitha Pearson, then you’ve been very, very good.) James Wade’s “At the Old Ball Game” misdirects expectations by appropriating a familiar refrain from Americana. Christopher Morgan’s “Omen” lays on the vague dread. “How They Lost Us” by Eleanor Gallagher simultaneously raises questions and promises answers. Christopher Allen goes all philosophical on us with “Everything that Matters in Life and Death.” The talented Allen Forrest provided this month’s cover art, “Nick and Nora.”

Liquefy the contents online or purée the PDF.

The theme for our seventy-sixth issue is . . . well, when you read thousands of submissions, you inevitably develop some biases over time. There’s a list of things we aren’t interested in publishing in our guidelines that was put together by our founding editors, Eirik and Monica, and I have my own list of things I prefer to avoid. The funny thing is, every single piece in this issue falls into a category I usually find problematic: stories told from multiple points of view, poems more than a page long, imagined encounters between actual historical figures, fictionalized portrayals of mental illness, rhyming couplets, dudes playing pool. When these things are done badly, as they often are, they make me cringe. But as it turns out, when they are done exceptionally well, they are a pleasure to read. So thank you, March contributors—I’ve never been so delighted to have been proven so thoroughly wrong.

Nuzzle it online or tickle the .pdf.

P. S. Get mooned by this month’s cover art.

Bust out the wine, chocolate, and red roses! And after you’ve delivered these obligatory offerings to the chubby Pennsylvanian rodent who controls the weather (seriously―do not make him mad), treat yourself to our seventy-fifth issue, which is so classy that it has an actual bidet. It also has butterflies, a kid with a beard, thumb chop-offing, Emily Dickinson, UFOs, and possibly a fairy. Read it now, before Punxsutawney Phil decides to deep-freeze the planet with his Ice Laser Doom Ray!

Hug it online or kiss the .pdf.