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1: The Pigeon and the city Sure, let’s stand on the corner. Grow, Your beak demands bread, So grow. Whoever told you, lies, An architect of you IS implied. You are in this city how I was once in a womb. 2: Rooster This is my Rooster. Sit on the bench Here, he’s ancient. I find it an honor He’s so aware That I am here. If I could read his tail It’d be a Dinosaur novella. 3: Getting to know Ame Gentle Ame on the sidewalk, Let’s talk. I carry sheep fur. Should it be A cumulonimbus coat Or my beard for now? Cup my chin and See how well we fit. Regardless, I am not the best porridge in the house, Little bear. 4: The unreliability of memory Flying saucer; Land here, Next to the dark Beside the car. My fingerprints do Cover you. As though I grew You in my garden. Pruned until proper And I saw my face. 5: My dying Egyptian cat You’re a good cat. Can I be honest? For your next win Death will breathe you in. Pyramids and kings All need skins Just like yours. I must ask, “What do you think of your newest free son, King Tut?”

"This has gone far enough,” snapped Maurice Sterling, head editor of The Story Quarterly (TSQ). He paced back and forth in the editors’ room, which was little more than a storage closet. Emily, one of his first readers, sat on an overturned egg crate. Unfortunately she hadn’t bothered to check whether the eggs were still inside, and right now she could feel raw yolk and whites oozing into the bottoms of her brand-new ergonomic heels. But she didn’t want to move and risk disrupting her boss’s rant. “This Lorna Ergot—this unrelenting, indefatigable so-called writer—this spot of fungus—is ruining our journal! I can’t take it anymore. This is her sixth submission this week. And it’s only Wednesday! Where on earth does she keep coming up with this drivel?” Despite its cramped quarters, TSQ was one of the most respected literary journals in circulation. Many of its authors had not only been submitted for but actually won Pushcart Prizes, and several had gone on to become bestselling novelists. The journal prided itself on its free submissions policy, which made sure that writers of every economic background had an equal shot, as well as not ever having implemented one of those very annoying “You can submit only once every three/six/seventeen months” policies. Maurice continued: “And it can’t be AI, either. I’ve checked. Every tech bro from here to Silicon Valley is trying to seize a spot in our journal by getting Chat GPT or some other godforsaken software to write their corny so-called fiction about lost college sweethearts and brothers who died while playing water polo and all that, but Miss Fungus’s writing, on a pure line level, is both too unique and somehow too foul to have begun as code. It’s so bad that there’s something almost…unholy about it.” He ran a hand across his brow, which was the color and texture of old cheese. “I fear that we’re not only taking time and attention away from more deserving writers, but also overwhelming our slush readers. As well as our first and second readers! Emily and Johnny, how do you feel about the amount of work that you’ve been facing lately? Don’t bother answering, I can tell by the expressions on your faces. And your peers, Chelsea and Dylan—” (they weren’t there; there wasn’t enough room in the storage closet for five people) “—I’m sure they’re close to breakdowns themselves.” “Why don’t you simply tell her she’s no good and to stop submitting?” inquired Emily, a little stung at the implication that she was visibly close to a breakdown. Maybe it was the fluorescent lighting. She hoped that it wasn’t also making her skin look like old cheese. “I’ve taken the Hypocritical Oath!” Maurice roared. “Don’t you mean the Hippocratic Oath?” she asked, wondering if she had missed her boss’s becoming a doctor. “No. I mean the Hypo-critical Oath. The oath that all head editors of top-tier literary magazines take—and I invented it. You see, hypo means less than, and critical means….critical. The very formulation of the word is an homage to my passion for linguistics. It’s an oath that requires us to find something to admire in every submission, no matter how small—something, in other words, not to criticize. And let me tell you, with Lorna’s work, sometimes it takes a good two hours to dig something like that out of one of her stories!” “But doesn’t hypocritical also mean—” began Johnny, a second reader, but Emily stomped on his foot. Johnny looked down in dismay at the raw egg goop covering his wingtip shoe. “What about banning her from submitting?” Emily suggested. “No. We can never do that. Remember the guy who submitted to the New Yorker fifty-odd times and finally got in, and his story was the darling of writing critics everywhere for months? It was a Hypocritical Jubilee—nobody had the slightest bit of criticism to give! So who knows…this Lorna Ergot might be the next William Faulkner.” He sighed. “Probably not. But she’d surely find a way to get around a ban. A new email…a new IP address…we can’t lower ourselves to playing games with this woman.” Emily and Johnny looked at each other. Surely he wasn’t going to expect them to come up with a solution. They were egg-encrusted unpaid readers, for god’s sake. “So the only course of action remains clear.” Maurice marched over to a section of the wall that appeared blank, reached up and wrestled with something at the top, and finally, with a great clanking and puffing of dust, a small blackboard rattled down. He searched in vain for chalk; not finding it, he turned to Emily. “Emily,” he said in the most courteous voice she’d ever heard him use, “might I make use of your concealer?” A minute later, he had used Emily’s bright white concealer (she was already very pale) to draw a dic—a mushroom–on the blackboard. It really looked like a dick, but Maurice insisted that it was a mushroom, for “Miss Fungus.” As he continued drawing, Emily tried experimentally to raise her feet from the ground. The eggs were already drying and her shoes were well on their way to being stuck there. So, slowly, trying not to make too much noise, she wiggled first one foot, then the other, attempting to loosen the egg but only managing to create soft squelching noises. Maurice painted an arrow pointing from the dick/mushroom to the right side of the chalkboard, and then began to draw something else. But he was running out of concealer, and managed only a semicircle before the line faded thinner and thinner into nothing. “What’s that supposed to be?” asked Johnny. “Death,” Maurice declared grandly. “Just—pretend this is a skull.” “Shame he used up so much of the concealer when he was drawing the dick,” Johnny whispered to Emily. “Like, did he really need to add a cock ring?” “That is the ring of the mushroom!” Maurice snapped. “The annulus, in other words!” “What do you mean by death?” Emily asked. She felt like she should be shocked, but she’d read so many fucked-up stories over the last few months that she felt like she simply had no more shocks to give. “It’s simple. We cannot ban Lorna Ergot from submitting. We cannot add yet more slush pile readers to deal with her, we cannot impose a prohibitory submissions fee, we cannot change the journal’s name and move across the country. There is only one option left to us. We need to meet the problem at its source—and eradicate it.” “Like stomping on a mushroom,” Johnny said, nodding wisely, trying to redeem himself from the cock ring comment. “Like stomping on an egg.” Emily sighed. She tried, gingerly, to raise her foot again. Another squelch. Another sigh. ___ Lorna Ergot prided herself on her tenacity. Not just her tenacity but her creativity, her ability to not only accept all the lemons life had thrown at her but to seize them with open arms, squeeze them into the brightest-tasting lemonade you’d ever seen, throw away the desiccated rinds, and then yell, IS THAT ALL YOU GOT? Today she was on her way to the grocery store. She supplemented her full-time-writer’s diet with fruit, cheese, and an ungodly amount of meat. Upon entering the store, she found herself facing a table with a few cups on it. It looked like one of those promotional setups that brands did sometimes. She attempted to breeze by, but was blocked by a dark-haired man with a knowing glint in his eye. He nodded to the table. “Won’t you try our special Honey-Nectar drink? It’s free.” “I hope it would be,” she said. “Except I don’t eat sugar. Or drink it,” she added. “Clogs the writing gears.” He nodded like he understood. “I totally get that. I’m something of a writer myself! What about our, uh, brand-new Focus drink? It’s got cucumber, celery, lettuce, and…spinach. It’s about the healthiest drink you could ever have.” Lorna actually got excited as he began to list the ingredients, but then her heart dropped at the mention of spinach. “I’m terribly sorry, but spinach has histamines, and I have MCAS. I can’t eat spinach, mushrooms, citrus, tomatoes…” “No mushrooms?” the man gasped in what appeared to be genuine surprise, and then clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes darting from side to side. “Why is that such a surprise? I hate mushrooms anyway.” “No—nothing—I just think that everyone should enjoy mushrooms—” he choked out.  “Perhaps you’d like to try our tea? Everyone likes tea—” “Thanks very much, but I’ll pass,” she said, edging away. What a strange fellow. And who wore wingtip shoes to work at a supermarket? It looked like he’d already gotten some gross stuff on them—dried egg whites, by the looks of it. But at least she had some new material for a story now. Odd brand ambassadors who attempted to ensnare passers-by with the queerest concoctions. Yes, she’d start work on that one right away, as soon as she reached home. She wrote parts of it in her head as she progressed down the aisle to the meat department. Time to get some fresh, juicy slabs of steak. But just as she reached the butcher’s station, she felt a tap on her shoulder. A blonde woman asked her if she wouldn’t possibly like to sample some better cuts of meat. “This is just the mediocre stuff,” she said in an undertone. “We keep the real fresh stuff in the back.” “In the back?” Lorna peered over the woman’s shoulder. There didn’t seem to be much of a “back” to the store, other than a dimly-lit passageway that led deeper into the bowels of the building. “Why wouldn’t you keep the freshest meat out here, where there are more customers?” “Because it’s colder in the back,” the woman said quickly. “Much colder. It’s the way the store is designed. It’s so cold that the meat is as fresh as it was when it was sliced directly off the cow—or the lamb—or whatever kind of animal you like.” “It sounds tempting, definitely—” And then the realization hit her like a blast of frigid air. The price. Of course. Meat that was so fresh, and kept so carefully preserved, must be at least twice the cost of the normal stuff. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, but I’m on a budget. There’s no way I could afford your fancy meat in the back. So I guess I’ll have to make do with the, ah, mediocre stuff right here.” She gave an apologetic smile. “Mediocre stuff?” The butcher, who had been at the other end of the section up until now, came storming up to them from behind the display case. “What’s going on? There’s nothing wrong with our meat! I’ll have you know it’s premium, Certified Humane, USDA Prime and Choice! And who are you?” He directed this last bit at the woman beside Lorna, but when Lorna turned, all she saw was the back of the woman’s head disappearing into a swarm of customers. Funny. They weren’t as organized over here as they usually were. Lorna considered asking the butcher about this mysterious back section where they kept the super-frozen carcasses. But something about his expression pushed the words back into her throat, and she was only able to smile meekly and ask for her usual twelve pounds of steak. All throughout Lorna’s walk home, the last words the saleswoman had used—or whatever kind of animal you like—kept ringing in her ears. There might be a story there too, yes. Humans were animals, were they not? She hadn’t written a story about cannibalism for a while—it had been at least two weeks—and so her mind began to swim with ideas, ideas that began to shape themselves into words and then into sentences. She was so busy thinking about all the stories she was soon to write that she didn’t even notice the man racing towards her—at least not until it was too late. “OOF!” Their bodies connected with a thud. Lorna wavered a bit but didn’t fall, as the two bags she carried—six pounds of meat in one hand, six in the other—held her steady. The man, on the other hand, fell heavily backward onto the pavement, all the wind knocked out of him. “Oh my gosh. Are you all right?” Lorna peered down at the man, who was writhing on the ground like an insect that had gotten all its limbs plucked off. The image was starkly terrifying—a butterfly with its wings peeled away, a spider without any legs—and she took a step backwards. The mental image was so vivid that it began to overtake her, and she had a thought—the same thought she had at least six but sometimes as many as twenty times a day—I must write. Forgetting the stranger, she hurried inside her house. When she deposited the grocery bags onto the counter, she found yet another surprise—a huge knife was buried in one of the bags of steak, almost to the hilt. “Well, I do have my own knives, you know,” she muttered crossly. “What must they think of me at that store? Do I really look like someone who buys twelve pounds of meat a week to just gnaw on it?” These words immediately gave rise to another mental image, one mixed with her earlier idea—cannibalism without knives or forks, just people chewing on each other’s leg bones. And that could tie into the image of the man writhing on the pavement—oh, the man on the pavement! She should check if he was okay. Lorna opened her door and peered out into the street, but to her relief, the man seemed all right: he had already gotten up and was walking into the distance. His steps were hard and fast and he was punching one fist into the other hand over and over—even from here she could hear the meaty slap of it. As well a furious string of curses. “Sorry!” she called, but she wasn’t sure if he even heard her. Bemused, she watched him disappear. But then she began to smile. It had been an unexpectedly interesting day, and she had so much to write about. She could sense at least four or five stories tugging at her right now, clamoring in her brain, demanding that she write them down. And maybe one of these stories would finally get her accepted into TSQ—into her dream journal. Maybe. Amy DeBellis is a writer from New York. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications including Flash Frog, HAD, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, Monkeybicycle, Atticus Review, and JMWW. Her debut novel is forthcoming from CLASH Books (2024).

It’s September and I’m ten years old and eating a Sabrett hot dog at Shea as the Mets lose to the Expos. The 1992 Mets may have gone down as one of the worst teams money could buy, but to me they’re blue and gray and orange Gods of the diamond, supernatural creatures doing superhuman feats on my very own field of dreams and nothing will stop me from root, root, rooting for them. This is another Uncle Jim outing since my parents spend their weekends negotiating their divorce. My little sister Stephanie was forced to come along too. But that’s fine because Steady Eddie Murray is up and though he’s not playing well and we all know the umpires have it in for him, everyone is up in their seats and the Sabrett onions are running red and slimy down my arm and Stephanie says “my tummy hurts” and I say “shut up, Eddie Murray is up,” pronouncing Murray like Mur-ray like a stingray or ray of sunshine instead of the correct Mur-ree like furry because I don’t know, it sounds fancier and what could be fancier than eating a genuine Sabrett at Shea? But William A. Shea is dead and the Mets are on life support and my uncle, even drunker than usual, spills just a tiny drop or two—accidentally of course, he’s not mean, he’s just a sloppy drunk and boisterous fan—of his Bud on the old lady in front of him. Uh-oh, this Bud’s for you. The old lady, enjoying getting taken out to the ballgame, doesn’t even notice. But her grandsons do. Both of them. And they’re huge and they stand up from either side of her like monsters from an orange-blue sea and one says, “Did you spill beer on my gramma, motherfucker?” Uncle Jim is drunk but sober enough to assess his odds, admit his mistake, and make amends. He says, “Fellas, an accident. An honest accident. Let me buy you a round. A couple of Buds and Sabretts, huh, and we can all enjoy the game.” He eyes my sister and I nervously, the dutiful uncle. In response, the other brother throws his beer in my uncle’s face—I see it still, the froth across his shirt, in his graying mustache, his eyes—and my uncle, middle-aged but spry ConEd electrician and Air Cav Vietnam War vet, forgets his niece and nephew, forgets his odds, even, incredibly, forgets the Mets, and launches himself at the man in front of him like a mustachioed missile, punching and kicking and teaching me a whole textbook of novel curses in the thirty seconds or so it takes for the brothers to break his nose and blacken both his eyes and knock him two rows down where he’s restrained by some fellow Mets fans who appreciate the excitement. More signs of life in the stands than on the field. Security comes and we’re swept up like so much stadium trash and brought to a room in the bowels of Shea. One guard sits us on a bench outside the room while my uncle tries to sweet talk the security higher-ups inside to avoid getting the cops involved. I ask the guard how Murray did. “Struck out,” he says. Stephanie takes my hand and says, “I want to go home.” The guard disappears into the room for a minute and returns, handing me a box of Cracker Jacks and a Mr. Met bobblehead doll before disappearing again. I open the box for Stephanie and she inhales a handful and promptly throws up on my shoes. The vomit is thin, reddish on the concrete floor and watery as the Sabrett onion sauce, with half-chewed Cracker Jacks floating in it like little popcorn icebergs. We sit like that for a while, the vomit soaking into my shoes, Mr. Met’s dumb grinning baseball head bobbling at us. My uncle emerges from the room holding his blood-soaked t-shirt and wearing a new one with the Tasmanian Devil in a Mets uniform. “Good folks here cleared me of all charges,” he says. “The head of security is a fellow veteran and Mets fan. But we’ve got to clear out for today.” Stephanie starts crying. I stand and I want to cry too. The floor feels mushy in my vomit-soggy shoes, wobbly, just as my world feels wobbly as my parents and their lawyers decide where we’ll live and who will raise us. Jim picks up Stephanie and says “Don’t worry, darling, we can catch the rest of the game on the radio.” Then he taps Mr. Met’s head making it bobble and asks me, “How did Steady Eddie do?” Jon Doughboy is languishing in right field. Take a gander at his errors from the nosebleed section over @doughboywrites

We’re in your garden eating dried apricots when you tell me you’re moving to France. I straighten my spine, swallow the waxy fruit. “I want the wine,” you say, hanging your head under a fuchsia and closing your mouth around it whole. You retract your jaw and retch, and I can’t help but smile ever so slightly. It is this shrub you dared me to pose naked in front of three Septembers ago. I was cold and glowed pink like the fuchsias, too nervous to say no and ruin our friendship back then. But what would you have done if I did? Why did you want me to do that anyway? You stared in a numb, wraithlike way as I crouched in the grass with my hands on my knees, pulling my shoulders in, and then you laughed and told me to put my clothes on before the boy next door ‘sees and vomits’. “It’s not that good,” I say. “What’s not?” you ask. “The wine.” “Oh? And you know this, how?” “My dad brought some back once, after a work trip. A Cote du Rhône, I think it was. He let me try a sip.” We lounge on the striped garden chairs. Your long legs hang over the side of yours. The limbs of a poor critter are glued in something sticky on the glass table between us. Its body appears to have broken free and flown off, high above the neighborhood, legless and dying. We spend a lot of time in your garden. We thought we saw the neighbor boy watching us from his window once, so you kissed me like a wild sucking thing and then the two of you started dating, until his parents moved away. Maybe to France. “Well, I’m still moving there,’ you say. ‘Comprenez vous?” Your accent is terrible, but I suppose it’s sweet that you’re trying. Although the apricot in your mouth is a hindrance, like a tiny shrunken head you scrunch and slop between your teeth. “You’ll be ok though, won’t you?” you say. I blow air through my lips so that they vibrate softly. “I guess so,” I reply. “But what will you do, Laura? I’m your only friend.” “That’s not true. I’ve got Jack.” You pucker your nose. “Who’s Jack?” “My boyfriend.” “Oh, yeah. Mr. Cargo Pants. Has he even eaten you out yet?” “Don’t be stupid,” I say. “He hasn’t, has he?” You fold your arms over your chest. “Knew it.” “Of course he has.” Your face cracks like a crème brûlée. I don’t remember life without that face. Our parents had us make friends when we still walked with our arms snatching at the air and our chins stuck out, little jelly cheeks wobbling. But as we grew, our cheeks defined themselves and so did our characters. We became girls, and girls can be strange things. One week we wore stick-on earrings and kitten t-shirts and did all the best friend quizzes in the magazines, the next we were buying bras we had no flesh to put in yet, and you plucked your brows into two cruel arches. You started the humiliation, climbing up on my shoulders and pushing down on my head, even if it meant I drowned in the water. But the only friendship I know is ours. That’s not true for you though. You palled up with Bunny a few years back, the girl who split her chin open in swim class – we all remember the blood clinging to the chlorine like fiery octopuses. And didn’t she have a baby in the girls’ bathroom? That one cubicle was out of order for months and Bunny was out of class for just as long. The teachers said it was just bad pipes and mono. But maybe you know the truth? “Well, I bet it was really bad,” you say. “Actually, it was really fucking good. And we’re gonna do it again tonight.” “You aren’t?” “Yep,” I say, snapping a fuchsia from the bush and twirling it between my fingers like a headless fairy. “I think I’ll give him head too.” – I won’t use the techniques you once taught me though, sliding your jaw up and down on a stick-of-rock candy you bought for the explicit purpose. Your lips pinch. “It won’t last if that’s all it is.” “What do you care, anyway? You’re moving to France.” You don’t say anything. And then: “Did you tell him about the time you peed your pants in the grocery store and my mom had to buy new clothes and help you change into them in the backseat of our car?” “Why would I do that?” “Oh, come on, Laura. It’s funny.” If you say so. And you do. You often do. “Why are you being weird?” Your brow crumples and you pluck the shriveled skin of an apricot from your mouth, swipe it on the table. “What do you mean?” “It’s like you’re jealous.” That’s the first time I’ve done that – pointed at the thing, circled it. Or is ‘jealousy’ just a way to explain the sometimes-strangeness of girls? One thing is for sure, we aren’t women yet. Maybe then it will all make sense. “Jealous of what, pray tell?” you ask. “Never mind.” “Good,” you say, sniffing the sweet peas. They’ve outgrown their patch. “Jealous. Ha!” The sky today is colorless, with long, thin clouds raked through it like clawed glass, and I wonder for a moment if the insect actually made it, out in the world without their legs. “When are you moving?” I ask. Catherine Roberts is brought to you by strong coffee and an untameable need to write. Her work has been published in Idle Ink and Five on the Fifth and is forthcoming in Flash Frog and Crow & Cross Keys. She can be found on Twitter and Blue Sky under the handle: @CRobertsWriter

Jesus Christ Throws Himself a Surprise Birthday Party To Interrogate Who Stole His Tupperware Lid He lent the portable containers to guests at his last barbecue for taking green bean casserole home. Jesus remembers Tommy, Derek, and Susan took some, definitely Larry, Terry, and even that bitch Karen — Jesus regrets creating her. Jesus thought how he should choose his friends better, Those bastards never return anything, even my collection of Hoobastank CDs I let them borrow. Jesus pretends to get home from a long day’s work, stretching and yawning as he pushes through the front door. The lights to his million room mansion are dimmed while everyone crouches behind leather sectionals, kitchen islands the size of Hawaii, and bronze statues of Jesus being crucified. Today is July Fourth, but Jesus said in the message he wanted his birthday party now. Everyone would just have to cancel their independent celebrations. Jesus enters the room and throws his skeleton key, that opens every door in existence, on the Bocote coffee table. When he flips the light switch on everyone pops out and yells Surprise! “Oh my God you guys! I had no idea!” “Yep,” they say. “We’d never forget your birthday.” “Yeah, it’s totally on July fourth,” someone yells out before getting elbowed by another guest. Jesus waves a hand and the man vanishes in a flame of smoke like a magician’s act. Poof. “Thanks everyone! Here are the games we’ll play,” another Jesus hand wave and games appear: Pin the lid on the Tupperware appears. Charades where each clue is Tupperware Lid. A bounce house made of Tupperware. “Oh wow, thanks Jesus!” The guests meander throughout Jesus’ mansion, getting lost throughout his maze of a home. Dying in corners left unattended. Where the hell is that lid, Jesus wonders, it’s the final piece to complete the set. Without it, what’s the fuckin’ point? It was a gift from his Father. Everything’s a gift from his Father. “So, John, thanks for coming.” Jesus interrupts the conversation John is having with his wife, Rebecca, about their children and schooling for the upcoming year. John was at the last party, probably has been stealing rubber-ware lids to sell for his kid’s college fund. “What did you get me for my birthday?” “Umm, here you go.” Rebecca hands Jesus a card that’s not shaped like a Tupperware lid. Jesus tears it in two and lights it on fire. He’ll remain on the suspect list. On to the next. Jesus sits in a large group of people talking about politics. “Is everyone having a good time?” Jesus interrupts. “We just got here.” “You know, I built these chairs. I’m somewhat of a carpenter.” “We know. You told us the last party you made us attend.” They return to talking about healthcare, gun control, foreign affairs. Things of no interest to Jesus. All that’s on his mind is where his Tupperware lid could be hiding. Even though he couldn’t see it, he had to have faith it existed. “So, Dean, thanks for coming.” Jesus flicks Dean’s New Orleans Saints hat off of his head. “That’s a nice — lid.” “What? Oh, my hat? Thanks, Jesus.” “Hey Susan,” Jesus shouts across the circle, “I heard a rumor that your boss is going to fire you, but let’s keep a — lid — on it.” “Whatever you say, Jesus.” The other guests are on their seventh time charading Tupperware lid get bored. The guests pinning the lid on the Tupperware aren’t even blindfolding themselves. Jesus didn’t like when people could see clearly, it made them closer to his level. “Hey Jesus, we’re gonna head out. We’ve got an early morning thing — soooo, yeah.” “WHERE THE FUCK IS MY LID!” Jesus yells. His booming voice rattles their bowels loose. “I set up all these fun games for you, but the only game I don’t want to play is Who Stole my Tupperware Lid.” The plastic bounce house crumbles and melts. The kids get stuck inside. At first, Jesus panics that they’re fetuses in a womb being aborted, then he realizes they’ve already been born and he loses interest in their well being. “Jesus, we all returned the Tupperware you lent us.” Jesus searches the cupboards frantically. His containers of various sizes are all there besides one lid. There’s nothing that needs saving at the moment, but there could be later. There’s always something to be saved. Jesus lived to save things: dates, letters from former lovers, the ties for bread bags. “Jesus, we’ll just buy you a new set.” “That’s not the point. This is for the principle of the matter.” His million fingers are pointed at everyone. “I swear if no one admits to it I’ll give each of you cancer.” A tear sneaks out of Jesus’ left eye, rolling down his cheek, burning a hole through the marble floor and into the Earth’s core. All of the guests look into the pit that’s forming underneath Jesus’ house. There’s piles and piles of garbage; greasy pizza boxes, stacks of reusable to-go cups, soiled diapers. The guests gasp at his trash. On the very top sits a plethora of Tupperware lids. The melting tears continue until it burns a tunnel through Earth to the other side. The ocean rushes into the core and extinguishes the heat, causing the planet to die. “Well, it’s been real y’all.” Jesus waves goodbye and teleports to another planet with life forms. It’s barren — for now. All purple rocks with the first hint of water forming. It’ll take a million years to get there. Jesus sits on a boulder next to the planet’s small puddle containing the first sign of life. “Hey. Hey you down there.” The puddle vibrates with the planet. “You want to see a magic trick?” Corey Miller’s writing has appeared in Booth, Pithead Chapel, Atticus Review, Hobart, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. He has been awarded the 2023 Literary Cleveland Breakthrough Residency and was a Kenyon Review Writers Workshop ‘23 attendee. He reads for TriQuarterly. When Corey isn’t brewing beer for a living in Cleveland, he enjoys taking the dogs for adventures. Follow him on IronBrewed @IronBrewer or at www.CoreyMillerWrites.com

What do they mean? The staircase is here. First one foot on the step, then the other quickly slipping in behind. I'm ascending, not vanishing. Amazing how the most benign of people or places can get a bad reputation. Remember, the possessed cat. What about the haunted river? So some mice, even a small dog, were torn limb from limb. And cops dragged bodies from the water with faces blanched, jaws cemented open, eyes popped like jack-in-the-box lids. I'm sure there's as simple an explanation for that as there is for why there's no railings on this landing. It was built on the cheap. Like my body was built on the cheap. Otherwise, why don't I sense there's suddenly nothing beneath me. Unless, that is, sudden revelation is something.

I’m not in my right mind. I can see, hear, and feel the air around me…but my thoughts have led me astray. I’m more unwell than I’d thought. I bask in the sun's warm, gentle glow. Thorny vines envelop me, holding my frail body to an earth so full of life. I try to breathe, but my lungs are dry—no longer drawing breath. My melancholic corpse lay among the earth. My teary eyes gaze upon joyous butterflies flying overhead. Their beautiful, colorful wings fill my salty vision. I study them while unable to move. I’ve become one with the earth, tethered to it. Roots of agony and shame engulf me. I don’t remember coming here. To this garden. My entire being becomes one with the seeds, the sprouts, and the budding blossoms. That was then. Now, the seeds have sprouted. The sprouts have budded. The blossoms have flourished. They dance in the wind, whispering fairytales as I’m forced to lay among them—a dead flower living among beautiful, colorful life. The flowers—my lone companions. I’m forgotten by mother nature. My moth-eaten flesh turns to ash as the vines around me tangle in my ribcage, budding small, yellow blossoms that’ll soon sprout within me. Flowers replace my heart. Dancing wind replaces my lungs. Butterflies replace my mind. The mind that tricked me into thinking I’m not a corpse within a garden, but I am. Neglected by everything and nothing all at once. Olivia Graves is a high school freshman who enjoys reading, writing, drawing, and playing guitar.

CW: Rape, sexual assault When I send my sexual abuse poems to Western magazines, they always end up rejected My poems are orphans in blood-stained underwear waiting for an arm to reach inside the dark tunnel of some strange editor’s dank mailbox. Outside the post box, a sticker reads: “We are an ally of marginalized people and women’s rights. Send us your nightmares. Your rage. Your unspoken truths”. When the lid finally opens months later, they examine my unspoken, raging nightmares: a battery-operated phallus that scattered like mold from my five-year-old hymen to my consciousness. A family driver stretching my frozen seven-year-old legs like weightless twine at sea, miles from safe harbor. Drunken neighbors’ cabinet-heavy body pressing against my tiny drawer bones. A friend forcing his lips on mine “brother to sister”. Middle-aged polio leg guy pushing my seventeen-year-old tachycardic chest against the wall, muttering At last we’re alone and free. A man who told me Tu eres mi princesa, only to put my no in the shredder while I drift off to sleep. Behold! Another icy form that reads: Sorry, this is not what we’re looking for. Romanticize your sexual assault. Make it pristine. Use only dreamy words like constellations, moon, light. Everyone swears they don’t fancy violence until they accept edgy but only for shock. Everyone wants poetry but only when it’s pretty. Everyone urges you to share your nightmares until they realize they can’t handle it. Everyone claims they are an ally until allyship is demanded. Every day a woman unzips her lips for liberty and justice for all for the first time. Every day, before her first syllable makes its way to the world, a White hand covers her mouth and tells her: Keep it as storybook-beautiful as possible. For my niece struggling with bipolar disorder There is a darkness in this world that even the world can’t put a finger on. Sometimes we’re asleep & it takes you by surprise. The room shapeshifts into a black ocean. You think god I am so alone on this boat. I am drowning. But know: even in our sleep, we are out on the water. Our limbs your paddles into the dawn. Sunlight hurts sometimes. Let your salt brine this water. We don’t mind if it turns into the Dead Sea. We will keep kicking until we reach the shore. Until your feet remember home. We will take out our tiny buckets & scoop the flood out of your marble eyes until you see you are goddamn worthy of this boat. Gretchen Filart is a writer from the Philippines, where she weaves poems and essays about motherhood, love, healing, nature, and intersectionalities. A finalist in phoebe’s 2023 Spring Poetry Contest, her work shares space in Rappler, Defunkt, Door Is A Jar, Barely South Review, and elsewhere. Connect with her on Twitter, Instagram, and Bluesky @gretchenfilart, or her website, ourworldinwords.com. She’s usually friendly.

The fact that we had arrived in the free-spirited city of Amsterdam became clear to us the moment we opened the door of our vacation rental. Written on the message board in the hallway was a note from the caretaker saying, “The water is safe, but drink beer!” An unnecessary suggestion but still appreciated. It was a typical Amsterdam apartment in being long and narrow and wedged (all buildings in Amsterdam are wedged) in between the lively (brace yourself) Reguliersdwarsstraat – the most famous street of Amsterdam’s flourishing gay scene – and the canal where the city’s famous flower market is located. As the sounds of these two different features of the city blended together, we immediately felt the urge to go exploring. Before leaving the apartment, we decided to give the guest book lying on the coffee table a quick glance in the hope of finding a restaurant recommendation. There were several of those, but the book contained much, much more. We became so engrossed in the funny stories written by former guests that we read the whole book in one sitting. Especially one contribution from an older (judging by their names) Danish couple named Hertha and “Buller” made us roar with laughter. It was so funny and well-written that it deserves to be quoted directly: “We were quite surprised, when opening the bedroom curtains on Sunday morning, to see a ‘drak [sic] queen’ in red feathers on the roof right outside our window. It was a show! She was being photographed for more than 15 minutes doing all kinds of poses and clearly enjoyed the moment as much as we did.” How could anyone describe the Amsterdam experience better than Hertha and her “Buller”? *** Since our trip to Amsterdam, we have been obsessed with guest books and have now read enough of them to fill a Victorian gentleman’s library. Not only are they treasure troves of useful information, they are also highly entertaining, and we are quite in earnest when we recommend them as literature. In Berlin, for example, each new group of vacationers had been terrorized by a pugnacious downstairs neighbor through such a long period of time that their individual reports read like a serial that could be titled “The Goblin Downstairs.” Since Berlin is a popular destination, we had two guest books plus a newly begun third one at our disposal. They were jam-packed with great tips to a great city, but featured most prominently and darkly in their pages was the downstairs goblin. Apparently, the downstairs neighbor had been utterly exasperated with the weekly arrival of a new pack of tourists with trolleys rumbling through the courtyard. This led to some unpleasant encounters, and several guests recorded harassment and even vandalism. There were stories of the air having been let out of the tires of their rental bicycles, and one person had even found a piece of paper saying “Tourists go home” pinned to the bicycle seat with a needle. Several people writing in the guest book solemnly declared that they had been quieter than could be reasonably expected of anyone, and still they became the objects of wrath from the goblin. So many were the recorded incidents between the guests and the amiable downstairs neighbor that we began to perceive him as the troll in the fairy tale Three Billy Goats Gruff roaring, “Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” It was clear from reading through the Berlin guest books that the downstairs neighbor’s fame had grown a little out of proportion and taken on the character of an urban legend. Perhaps that is why one guest decided to take the air out of the whole thing in his contribution to the guest book. His text, in its entirety, read as follows: “What grumpy neighbor?” The troll under the bridge was not the only thing to keep us amused. One of our favorites was this controversial statement, which the writer denied all responsibility for when she noted: “Frank says he misses the Berlin Wall and the tensions of the Cold War.” With that one sentence, we can hear the whole discussion, and we feel we have known Frank since kindergarten. A different Frank appeared in the same guest book as “man overboard” after having met a beautiful Italian girl at a pub the night before, and not since resurfaced. He was actually referred to as “El Franco” by his two friends, which we took to be a hypocoristic alteration of the name Frank. Before we close the book on Berlin, this comment, written in the hand of a teenager, deserves an honorable mention: “Berlin is a BIG city: my mom has gained 9 pounds.” *** In a vacation rental in Italy, two young girls named Charlotte and Christine left the most instructive essay we ever read on the subject of where to find a party. Through several closely written pages, the girls chronicled a meticulous day-to-day (or, we should say, night-to-night, for Charlotte and Christine are nocturnal creatures) account of their adventures. Although highly edifying, it is too long to quote here, so the readers will have to settle for a brief summary of their experiences. Their first words are a warning that the local nightlife is not much to boast of, as they discovered on the eve of their arrival. The apartment is located in a small town about 30 kilometers south of Rome by a lake that is a popular retreat for Romans wanting to escape the masonry barbecue that is the capital during summer. It had all improved on the second night when the girls got dressed up and took the train to Rome with a bag full of beers. They minutely describe the route they took when exiting the Termini railway station: You go to the back of the station, turn right, and walk along the chain link fence on a sidewalk that will turn into a narrow dirt road running parallel to the train tracks. Keep going although the road gets darker and darker, and after three-quarters of a mile, you will find the place where the young squatters hang out. Charlotte and Christine had quite a night – highly recommended, Hertha and “Buller” – as they hung out around a bonfire with this autonomous tribe until the early morning when they could take the first train back to the apartment. The rest of Charlotte and Christine’s contribution to the guest book is a well-researched, expertly written topography of dive bars and unofficial youth festivals in a 20-kilometer radius, complete with timetables, hand-drawn maps, and flyers inserted. *** We hope you enjoyed these fine examples of literature that informs and entertains at the same time, and if you read nothing else on your next vacation, let it be the guest book. Jesper Soerensen is from Denmark and now lives in Colorado with his husband and their two dogs, Charlie and Nora. His first book, Charles Dickens: The Stories of His Life, is out now from Olympia Publishers.

Everyone has those travel bags. The doors of the car opens near the river. A bow boat plays a long lone note on the chordophone water. Silence summons Autumn. An invisible slayer sheds the leaves one by one. Because you hide the smoking habit you have been quitting since your wedding when she calls from the resort balcony you begin a wildfire. Soon the evidence of fall all will go, leaves and land, devil's bridge and the stones, even the sun. The stars rise; in the black sky they are the cold bones. About the author: The author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

(South Africa, circa 1980) The laughter surrounded us Each member of the audience chronically infected as the joke plunged on towards its punchline when the roars would rise even higher There’d been plenty of laughs already There were many more to come Laughter was the order of an evening that followed an afternoon of fun, fellowship, food the entertainment to tie it together and send us home satisfied There we were, the staff of a Bible college students, senior church members families, kids, my brother and me - 11 and 13 bewitched by unbridled belly laughs Church jokes, clean jokes… blessed jokes? And somewhere beyond the half-lit semi-circle of this joyous Saturday evening soirée the only people there with accents close to the one the joker mockingly aped were finally settling in for the evening in the servants’ quarters Grant Shimmin is a South African-born poet, resident in New Zealand since 2001. He has work published/forthcoming at Roi Faineant Press, Does It Have Pockets?, The Hooghly Review, Dreich, and elsewhere.

When it Comes to Breakfast, I Don’t Tread Lightly. I am Naked, Alone, and Locked in my Bathroom Eating Forkfuls of Frosting. For the past year, maybe two, probably longer, the first thing I eat every day is dessert. I know better. I should be eating a bowl of plain oatmeal with sliced banana or Special K in almond milk, but I don’t want to hear about that. I have been in therapy since my first marriage (I made an appointment with a therapist just after we returned from our sexless honeymoon in Bermuda) and if I ever admit my addiction to my current counselor, (I’ve had a few) she might tell me I am depressed and exhibiting passive-aggressive behavior. She will say, “Well, you love your family, but you’re weary of them. You feel like you must even the score, up the ante, because they have made you spend years doing things you hate. Laundry, meals, driving them to wherever, spending a lot of cash on whatever, depriving you of sleep, and forcing you to spend hours imagining a life of debauchery and depravity in Mallorca with a sexy Spaniard who has great hands and will make sure you never see the inside of a Walmart ever, ever again.” She may also throw in my stalled career (I was supposed to be a journalist) and that I am super-annoyed my husband must pay alimony until he’s dead. Or until his ex is. I should also mention I don’t love all my neighbors, hold massive grudges against people who deserve them, and nurture other annoyances that are simultaneously entertaining and simply sad. I think my sugar addiction is just my desire to burn, not calories, but just burn. Do what I want. Have a secret. Be bad in the bathroom while I am getting dressed. I can’t bring myself to cheat on my husband (I’ve had a few offers), smoke weed, drink and be disorderly, or take huge vacations with girlfriends, so it is just desserts. This is how I begin my days. I tell myself not to do it, but then I do, and it is quick, like a vampire bite I can’t take back. It usually happens before 8 a.m., when I am getting ready for the day. I lock myself in the bathroom with a bowl of Chips Ahoy cookies to dunk in dark roast coffee. Or have a slice of layer cake. I do it before or after a shower, leaning over the tile counter, often naked or half-dressed, which makes it worse because there is a mirror nearby and my belly seems to be rising. The most important part of having morning dessert is figuring out how to hide the fact that I am having morning dessert. It is easier to eat the sweet stuff everyone knows we have in the kitchen. These items are store-bought and include the aforementioned Chips Ahoy cookies, Breyers ice cream, Carvel cakes and sometimes baklava, which I should be making because I am Greek, but then would have to hide because it might be better than the store’s. Once I cross the line to upper-class desserts, the Maseratis of Mousse, the hoarding intensifies. This list includes anything I order online, anything made by a company with an ampersand, such as Harry & David, or with a person’s name, Mrs. Fields. I also am possessive of my neighbor Violet’s baking. As payback for the figs I give her during the summer, Violet brings me chocolate chip Bundt cake (her aunt’s recipe), that I love a little more than the Ghirardelli chocolate brownies from Harris Teeter I never pass up when I am over there buying healthy fish to make for dinner. Those desserts are hidden. I don’t want to share them and recently added The Biltmore Vanilla Bean Cheesecake to my do not disturb list. I hid it in the basement freezer, behind the Pepperidge Farm cake, which now has a lower status because the Biltmore cake’s package mentions the Vanderbilt family and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla beans. I don’t know where vanilla beans grow, but because the Biltmore cake has the ones from Madagascar, those vanilla beans seem to be more important than the ones growing elsewhere, wherever that is. Eventually, I am going to get caught. My husband has mentioned (more than once) a German stollen that has been sitting in our basement freezer for years. I checked the wrapper for an expiration date but couldn’t find it. I think it froze off. Or maybe the cake was sent to me before they started using expiration dates. The stollen has rum in it and is some recipe from Frau Helga. I don’t know Helga, but I appreciate her nonetheless. I really think I should hide the stollen. Maybe I should cut it in half like you would a dead body, but it is so frozen, I don’t think I will have enough time to thaw, cut and hide it before someone comes home. Loukia Borrell is a proud, first-generation American. She was born in Toledo, Ohio, to Greek-Cypriot immigrants and was raised in Virginia. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, with a journalism concentration, from Elon University. She is a former print reporter. Her essays and poetry have been published in American, English and Irish literary journals. To learn more, please visit her website at loukialoukaborrell.com.