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While reading through A.R. Williams’ debut collection A Funeral in the Wild: Poems, I became haunted by the concept of a sense of place: of roots, where they attach, and what happens when those things change. Human nature dictates a need for some semblance of structure, of routine — we adapt to people and places, adjust to circumstances, find comfort in everything from reliable seasons to building structures to curtain colors. We acclimate, “bloom where we’re planted” to quote a cliché, for better or worse. A harsher truth dictates that nothing in life is static. Williams reflects tenderly on life’s impermanence in this work, chronicling painful absences ranging from human presence to former homes to love lost in the tide and the remnants we reckon with in their wake. From The Newlywed: As I stare at another feeble attempt to delay the inevitable, I am reminded of my early years of marriage. I was young, broken, hurting, and confused, trying to love another, while lacking love for myself. Self-help books, prayer, empty promises— bungy cords, ropes, zip ties. From On My Porch: A breeze wafts its earthy, chemical breath on my porch. Here, I taste your nebulizer drug just as I did those many winter eves. From Dog Tag Necklace: A blissful boy, I wore your pride around my neck, until the chain disappeared from the pool that summer. Today, I saw a cadet at the pharmacy and recalled the pool, wondering whether your approval was still there. If nothing in life is permanent, that also extends to despair. Constant shifting of circumstances means you find what is good and beautiful again even in the wake of loss. A Funeral in the Wild: Poems is not merely a documentation of destruction but an observation of that shifting, like the changes in a beach’s appearance at high and low tide. From What Gives Me Hope: But that was before the pizza became cold, the ballpark expensive, and this house, too small. Now, we long to bud where we were first planted. But today our neighbor— the gardener—said that of all weeds, dandelions can withstand the harshest growing conditions. A Funeral in the Wild: Poems by A.R. Williams is scheduled for release in February 2024 through Kelsay Books. A.R. Williams (PhD, Bangor University, Wales) lives with his family in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. He has been widely published in poetry journals, magazines, and anthologies. He is also the editor of East Ridge Review. A Funeral in the Wild: Poems is his first poetry collection. Twitter @andrewraywill

We sell popcorn. It’s our job, even if it’s not a sufficient economic provider. We abide by rules and maintain standards and report to an employer that doesn’t care about us, but something brings us back every day. We load the machine. We scoop out the popcorn. We fill the variously sized boxes. We speak to customers, naughty and nice. We tidy shelves. We sweep floors. We do toilet checks. We change and take out bins. We scour the showtimes for typos. We count the money. But we also sneak into films. Sometimes, we’re given permission to sit in on screenings. Other times, we go in anyway. For those pockets of 90, 120, or 150 minutes, we’re defibrillated. We’re on stilts, watching from high above ground, untouchable by the miserable shift manager or overqualified duty manager who otherwise have the power to relegate us to floor level. To popcorn machine level. To cash register level. We sneak into commercial blockbusters and arthouse gems. Films that make us smile and films that make us shout. Films we disappear into the crowd for, glad to not be responsible for people’s experience. Films that less successfully distract our terms of employment – that we discretely scoop up popcorn during, wipe down a seat with an anti-bac cloth during. Those films repel us. Others invite us in. The doors to screen 5 are unguarded by a ticket checker. This is a weekday matinee commonplace, for anything higher than screen 2. 20 minutes after the advertised start, I’m in screen 5, seated on the back row, momentarily pretending to dustpan and brush spilled pick ‘n’ mix. 10 minutes later, after the post-advert trailers have turned back into adverts, I stop pretending to dustpan and brush. Mick – the team favourite – is shift manager today, meaning we could gut a patron, move the body, and clean up the mess (negating the possibility of a crime scene) and he wouldn’t notice. His head would be in a crossword or his attention on a YouTube tutorial for sushi making. His feet up on his “desk.” The door to his “office” closed. 5 minutes later, I escape with Scarlett Johansson to Glasgow. She’s an alien taking human form; I’m an idle spectator, at the mercy of whatever instructions or advice or warnings her character and the film wish to give me. Johannsson’s alien seduces Scottish men and traps them in an all-black void, where they become submerged in a liquid abyss. I only sink into the fabrics of my uncomfortable red seat. I think of my Dad leaving my Mum a year ago. I wonder where he is. I think of the deferred university place I’m soon scheduled to take up, a year later. I think about whether the transportation from one world to another and the permanent closure of my comfort zone are worth it. I think of the corn kernel which expands and puffs when heated. I think about whether sales of sweet will outdo sales of salted today – and about who will bother to record this information for Mick. Sweet or salted… salted or sweet. George Oliver has just finished a PhD on contemporary transatlantic literature at King's College London, where he also taught American literature for three years. He is both a short fiction and culture writer. His short stories have recently appeared in The Bookends Review, BRUISER, Clackamas Literary Review, Eunoia Review, and Querencia Press.

My nana used to have a patio at her apartment that was full of lush, green potted plants.  I remember her taking such pride in opening the sliding glass door to take her full watering can to her little suburban jungle.  She quenched each of them until the water spilled over the sides of their pots or through the hole in the bottom.  Her concrete jackrabbits guarded the big pots on the ground and the hanging plants swung slightly with the North County San Diego breeze and visiting hummingbirds.  Nana’s apartment was a magical place with a warm, clean scent like vanilla and dryer sheets.  Her bedroom closet floor was coated in a couple of layers of shoes she always let me try on.  Her hall closet was full of Mary Kay products.  Lots of formula 1 skin care and night cream.  Nana used to make me peanut butter and banana sandwiches, sometimes with honey drizzled on the bananas. We watched the 1970s version of Romeo and Juliet when I spent the night one time, after we watered her thriving plants.  Memories of Nana, now that she is gone, hit me at unexpected times.  One of these times, I thought it would be a good idea to grow some plants.   Evelyn and I decided to plant some seeds.  I thought we were doing well with our plants.  They were growing.  Then, we went on a long weekend out of town.  Now, the plants are withering as fast as I am. CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches and rarely relaxes.  She has presented over 50 times at communication conferences, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections: God Bless Paul, Soup Stories: A Reconstructed Memoir, and Writing Our Love Story, and three chapbooks: The Way We Were, Tumbleweed:  Against All Odds, and The Villain Wore a Hero’s Face.  She is raising her daughter and dog with her husband in Alhambra, CA.

Mama’s strides back and forth make sun and shadow fall in rhythm: dark light dark light. A drumbeat or a heart. Benita glances up from the kitchen table and watches Mama press her mobile phone to her ear. Benita is working on her project for school. She needs to draw something that means home. Though she knows her classmates will fill pages with tile-roofed houses, she’s chosen to draw a zunzuncito, the tiny bee hummingbird. To create an extra vivid emerald, she licks the tip of a green pencil to layer on top of blue. It tasted like a pebble on her tongue. Beside the zunzuncito, she draws the zunzun, a regular-sized hummingbird, which is still smaller than many of Cuba’s butterflies. Mama’s pacing slows and she begins to speak into the phone, explaining the letting agent’s email. There’s a pause and she squawks: “Reasonable! That much more rent every month?” Benita knows what comes next. Their few belongings in boxes, with half abandoned where they stand. Nights on the sofas of friends from Mama’s English Language classes. And, eventually, a new place with stale cigarette smoke hanging in thin curtains and fist-sized dents in the walls. Another fresh start, in this country so far from Benita’s fire-headed papi and home. She adds a dot of red to the fierce zunzuncito’s eyes to match that fire that burns inside her sometimes too. Her school shoes already squeeze tight again. Everything here feels too small. Scuffing her toes against the bumpy linoleum floor, she remembers her abuela’s balcony, the hot scent of lime trees growing in blue glazed pots, and the glitter of battling hummingbirds defending territory. From the kitchen she heard the chatter clatter of talk radio and Abuela laying out plates. “Benitacita, lunch is ready!” She felt those sounds and smells like water lifting her body. The lowland forest hummed, its treetops hiding the ocean beyond. Judy Darley lives in southwest England. She is the author of short fiction collections The Stairs are a Snowcapped Mountain (Reflex Press), Sky Light Rain (Valley Press) and Remember Me to the Bees (Tangent Books). Her words have been published and performed on BBC radio and aboard boats, in museums, caves, a disused church and an artist’s studio. Find Judy at http://www.skylightrain.com; https://twitter.com/JudyDarley.

Why such an intelligent-looking physically strong young guy is behind the counter selling sandwiches at the airport? When I ask him to make me a tuna sandwich he points at his ear indicating he can’t hear well. “Tuna on one of those big Parisian rolls, sil vous plait,” I shout. He nods. “American?” I shout, “Canadian. From Quebec.” He nods again and asks my name. “Victor Hugo,” I shout. He frowns. “Yeah, and I am Quasimodo.” I want to explain to him my father’s last name was Hugo and my mother was a voracious reader, and the two of them had decided early on if the baby was going to be a boy they would name him Victor. Back in Montreal my French speaking buddies think it’s a cool name, otherwise no big deal. This guy here at CDG is different; he seems quite pissy about it. Hello, it’s my name! When I insist that I want the sandwich, he flips the bird and turns to the next in line. I see the manager is at the other end of the store. I go complain to him; he waves it away. “Don’t mind him, he is cranky today, he’s got some girlfriend problem. And it doesn’t help he sometimes works nightshift in the Notre-Dame. Apparently not a cakewalk, a real back-breaking job. Let me make you that sandwich. It’s on the house.” He makes the tuna sandwich and he hands it to me with a friendly smile. I am inclined to ask him the crazy assistant’s name but decide against it. That would be too much information. John O’Keefe is a scientist, trilingual translator and fiction/prosimetrum writer. His short stories and prosimetra have been published in Every Day Fiction, Microfiction Monday, Six Sentences, 50WS, Paragraph Planet, FFF, New North, Irreproducible Results, etc.

Elixir He took the pills dutifully. She thought they were cyanide. Turned out to be Cialis. She decided to give the old bastard a second chance. Tightly Wound Greta whispered to George as they arrived, “I’ll distract them. You snag Sam’s Rolex off his dresser.” That’s when she realized she’d butt-dialed Sam’s wife. Old Flame Where his heart should have been was sawdust and straw. He never told me why, only that he wanted to love. He just didn’t know how. Kathryn Silver-Hajo is a 2023 Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing nominee. Her flash collection Wolfsong was published in May 2023. Her novel, Roots of the Banyan Tree is forthcoming this Fall. For more, visit: kathrynsilverhajo.com

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.