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My boss, Who’s worked In our district Through nine presidencies, Refers to The students As children. Yesterday, During second period, One student Attacked another In the boy’s room, Which is located Across the hall From my room. A passing teacher Glanced into the restroom, Screamed— I called security And returned To teaching My B-level Sophomores. I later learned that The assailant had Banged the victim’s Head against the floor And, For good measure, Bit a chunk of Flesh Out of his Forehead. Some teachers Said that it Could’ve been worse: He’d need stitches, Maybe even plastic surgery— But at least he hadn’t Lost an eye. My boss’s Office is two Floors below; Unless she asks, I’ll not mention The incident: There’s something about Letting her think What she does, Yet there’s something Else— Greater, More difficult— That tells me That there’d be No point. S.F. Wright lives and teaches in New Jersey. His work has appeared in Hobart, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and Elm Leaves Journal, among other places. His short story collection, The English Teacher, is forthcoming from Cerasus Poetry, and his website is sfwrightwriter.com.

I Think I Could She asked, “What could I have done That would have made you stay?” She saw your error and crime and implicated herself in your own devices. She sought not for an apology but had sewn a reconciliation from patches of guilt and heartbreak. Stained, but unacknowledged. She heard that you cheated and wondered what she did wrong. And you wondered nothing at all. A Former Friend Said “You must be fun at parties. You can hold my discomfort for me like a purse as I go take a piss. Parties are not the time to think or remember. I can’t block out the past with your presence here. Be more fun. More cool; Less aware. Please wrap up your wound. Your blood is dripping on the floor. This is such a nice Oriental rug that is being stained by you. I can’t hear the music as well with the sound of your cries. Please consider how your pain affects me. For once.”

“Can you believe TikToks have become homework assignments now? No, for real, my roommate at school, she’s a business major right, and her final assignment for her marketing class is to make a Tik Tok representing the university. Now what kind of bullshit is that?! I take more stock in philosophy majors and all their assignments are just to think thoughts or regurgitate someone else’s. Academia is dead! Colleges treat their professors like Walmart employees dropping them at whim when the semester ends. Fuck, if I taught there I’d probably assign a Tik Tok too - it’s not like anyone cares anymore…” Venting to coworkers is great because well, you’re bored, they’re bored, and it's not like they have anything else to do or anywhere to escape to. “They told me I can’t wear my black scrubs anymore, can you believe that?” “And I mean I know being a comp lit major, creative writing minor isn’t gonna save the world or anything but at least it doesn't try to be anything more than it is- I mean, I like to read and write and that’s it. Now THAT'S some real Academia!” “You’re a narcissist, you know that right Astrid?” “Well you’re a skinny emo fuck with shitty tattoos Devon.” It is 11pm. They both think that they are smarter than the other but perhaps a close match intellectually. The self-described darkly dressed arcane finds her absurd and amusing. They are both caricatures of identities they maximize their daily effort into assuming. Writing on the PeterPan bus makes her feel like Jim Carrey journaling on the train in the beginning of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. One day she will feel like the Jim Carrey today who denies his acting career instead desiring only to paint mangos. How tropical and romantic! He enjoys taking public transportation to random destinations pursuing an eternally unidentified muse. How does photography require a muse? Is it not simply capturing the present? He writes some poems too though, to accompany his photographs. Or should I say, “film”; the expired film produces odd shapes and colors which, in spite of its deterioration, has managed to outlast Devon’s grandfather whom he ceaselessly reminds all who are willing to listen that he was “a wildlife photographer for National Geographic.” This was their first shift together in quite some time so they both had a lot to fill one another in on… or rather talk at each other about. Once one of them assumes the dominant speaker role in the conversation, the other is forced to listen, doing their actual job. Here, a one person task must always require two. Devon had moved to Brooklyn but returned a brief three months later, tail between his legs, begging for his job back to their scummy corporate hospital manager. And he did get it back, with the condition that his black scrubs (which he had worn without fail at every single shift prior) be put to rest for good. Begrudgingly, he sacrificed his emo-boy garb for a paycheck. “I’m such a sell out,” he whined to himself from under his black KN-95 mask, the sole survivor of the identity which has been stripped from him at the workplace. The irony of it all is that he most definitely could have declined this condition and still have his job back. With a turn-over rate that high, the hospital couldn’t really deny any help they were offered. His stick and pokes of genderless creatures with pointy breasts and sad faces look more ridiculous than ever before in contrast to the navy blue paper-like scrubs which seem to float a half-centimeter above his close hanger shaped body. That body which promised him success as a model boy in Brooklyn secured only a few jobs with niche jewelry brands whose necklaces hung daintily above his chest tattoo which branded himself as “Free”, referencing the luminous variety of songs under this title including but not limited to: Mazzy Star, Angel Olsen, Lana Del Rey among other angelic, ethereal voices. Financially and socially he decided himself more suited to living in suburbia for now. He thought being in the city would make him feel at home among people who were likewise unconventional and alternative. What he did not realize from his initial visits, he realized a short few weeks later; he was not as unique as he had imagined . The city is a big pond full of lots of small, pale, tatted fish with minor addiction problems just like him. The battle to assert one’s individuality there is far greater a feat than the area he and Astrid had grown up in. His individuality complex damaged and his pride swallowed, he embraced his poverty as an aesthetic and a decision to live with less rather than the consequences of trying to be someone he was not and chasing a dream that could only come to fruition with the generational wealth assumed by the Brooklyn boys who he was surrounded by. Astrid envies his ability to have such a decisive and defined sense of self. Her identity requires a more careful fine-tuning that comes with the simultaneously languid and vigorous selection of language through which she expresses herself. The kind of expression that goes unchallenged from a young man but is flagged as hysterical and overly self-important when regarding women. Recently, while eavesdropping, she heard someone describe someone else as “estrogenical”; surely an insult, yet she actually found it quite endearing and has decided to reclaim it, incorporating it into her tweets and daily vernacular with her friends. Other words she has created outside of her abrasive academic animation include but are not limited to: “skibble-dibble”, “squapple-dock”, “hagger-daggers”, “boobacha” and so on. Many of these phrases are plagiarized from her father’s impassioned, unrefined story-telling slang. But can you even plagiarize your parents? She considers these colloquialisms to be inherited. She wants to be taken seriously but has a hard time removing the emotions which accompany having your own opinions in an apathetic world. For this reason her writing is almost entirely crap. Writing, while undeniably an artistic outlet, is for her mostly an emotional outlet. She has been therapizing herself in her diaries since elementary school in order to be able to refine her expression so that feelings are removed in her communication with the public world. The transition from teenaged adolescence to young adulthood has been challenging for Astrid however as her feelings have inevitably bred with her world-view and she finds herself drawing associations and deeper meaning between concepts which do not require such analysis. Academica has absorbed her and she struggles to differentiate her reality from that of the characters in the books she reads. The psychedelics and stimulants only further muddle this life transition as you can surely imagine. Devon, a few years older than she, entertains this existentialism which carries through every conversation the two have. He relays his firm, defined conclusions about life which have likewise been molded by psychoactive molecules years prior and minimally pondered. These conclusions come easier to those raised as boys; they’re not used to being told no, or accused of being too assertive. Gender, when determined by genitalia, discourages self-doubt in men and boys. Astrid believes that by asserting masculinity through being abrasive she too may not be met with doubt; her inner-monolog says otherwise however and “faking it till you make it” as her father always said is often met with hostility or the assumption of immaturity from girls with freckles and glaring eyes. She often finds herself wondering “Am I really a bitch? Or am I just acting like a man?” For Devon however, asserting femininity invites others to be vulnerable with him. Even if that assertion is only evident through his frail frame and singular dangly swan earring hanging in the crooked hole of his earlobe firmly attached to the side of his neck. While it is wonderful how society is beginning to embrace less socially rigid tropes, celebrating a boy for being ‘secure in his masculinity’, in spheres of indie wannabees this often translates into the harnessing of feminine expression as a mechanism of accumulating social capital, facilitating a facade to garner the trust of alt-girls. Between existentializing or dissecting one another’s lives, Devon and Astrid analyze the daily doings of the clinic, occasionally participating in them when necessary. The title of “Care Assistant'' makes their job sound admirable and important to the veterinary community, and while these assumptions are not untrue, in reality the job is far less glamorous. While they were often called in by the doctors when the hospital was short staffed to do things they were utterly unqualified for that surely only someone with a license should be doing, their only official duties aside from cleaning the hospital and doing laundry is to handle the bodies. To put them in body bags, take their paw print in clay post-mortem as a souvenir for the owners, and carefully (or not, depending on the awkwardness which the body asked to be handled or the strength of the assistant) place the cadaver in the freezer among the rest of the week’s dead. Bodies get picked up like clock-work, every Tuesday morning to be sent to the crematorium for private or general cremation, depending on the family’s wishes Most of the time the job required two assistants, asserting this for the late night shift is nearly laughable and considered among staff to be flushing hospital money down the toilet; especially since working past midnight means time and a half pay! No one minds watching them throw away money though , no one gives a fuck about their corporate bullshit. Astrid and Devon do not mind staying there until dawn. There is always more black coffee to make and drink into the night. The intercom pings and the care assistants are once again called upon interrupting their conversation. Begrudgingly, they make their way to the ER side of the hospital away from the enclosed privacy of their dingy laundry room. Astrid tries to mask her exhaustion , standing straight and tall while he slumps ahead looking as exhausted as the moment he arrived, eyes with bags as black as those they put the bodies in. She strides ahead of Devon eager to impress and addresses the head tech, Melanie, to direct her to their task. She imagined something interesting, something that could simply not wait till morning. She was, of course, disappointed. Devon and Astrid must receive “Baby Muffin” from their grieving owner at the front door. Yes, the cat’s name is actually “Baby Muffin” and no, unfortunately she did not pass in-clinic. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring her in sooner, it was just so hard to say good-bye and I wanted her siblings to be able to know she was gone, smell that she was gone, if you know what I mean.” And with this parting explanation of the need for a lengthy bereavement period for her other cats, she walked slowly out of the smudged lobby double glass doors. Baby Muffin passed away two days ago at home, peacefully in her sleep. She was twenty years old, and suffered from kidney failure. She is cold and stiff in her hair-caked faux-fur white bed which exemplifies the impression of her day-old corpse so deeply it appears as though its material has consumed her, her one and a half kilogram body grew out of the object of rest portraying more vivacity in its materiality than surely she had in months. Her mother is Margaret, a sweet, regular client with three other cats who has been ceaselessly haggling at the hospital for a senior discount for months. It is difficult to describe the feeling of putting the corpse of a feline into a plastic bag without actually placing the corpse of a feline into a plastic bag. Margaret had one thing right for sure, Baby Muffin definitely smells dead. While loosening up her riger-morphosized wrist with the hair dryer, Devon and Astrid flip a coin to decide who would have the unfortunate task of placing her body in the bag and who shall have the slightly more favorable task of pressing her stiff paw into clay and scribing “Baby Muffin” under it. Like morbid arts and crafts. Devon was always heads, Astrid tails. Flicking it off of his gloved finger, Devon bent down to see what fate had chosen for them both. It was heads. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath through the KN-95 which still did not block out the smell of rot, Devon placed Baby Muffin with her bed in the black plastic body bag leaving only her front right paw exposed. Rapidly ripping off the gloves as one could never get accustomed to the sensation of lifting the limp and warm or in this case cold and rigid shell of a once beloved, innocent soul, he threw them in the garbage and began grabbing his belongings. “Where the fuck are you going? Our shift doesn't end yet.” “Ummm yeah sorry the bus doesn't run late today so I’m hitching a ride with a friend… Unless you could drive me? Oh? No? That’s what I thought. Peace bro, see you.” He leaves early to catch a ride home with his friend who works at the Subway next door. He instructed Astrid, in his usual amiable au-devoir, to clock him out two hours from now, when their shift was meant to end. She checked the doctor schedule for tomorrow to see what appointments would be coming in on the General Care side. “Oh, great,” she thought, exotic small mammals, “time to get punctured by feral, angry little teeth.” Before she read or doodled, or did any potential side work to prove she was not entirely lazy (the bar is pretty low to be honest), she wrote a bit: It is difficult to step off of the hamster wheel sometimes; to resist stepping into the bird cage and becoming a cartoon. Food isn’t a necessity when coffee makes you faster when you drink it until your stomach aches and by the time you get around to eating again, it’s utterly repulsive. Fingers and toenails are never too long or in need of a file until they are jagged, tearing holes in your socks or rubbing raw the neighboring appendage’s flesh. Ingrown. “You should be sure to come in at least once a month to have your pet's nails trimmed, or if you’d like you can learn to do it yourself at home!” *fake, toothy smile under the mask* Writing comes when thoughts repeat in the mind for too long and I want to move onto the next already. Sometimes the thoughts sit so long they blend into the pink matter imprinting, imprisoned in indistinguishable patterns like Baby Muffin’s dirty white fur in her dirty white bed. It is so unfortunate that more often than not that manifests in to-do lists which I take more satisfaction in creating than completing. To-do: bring Baby Muffin’s body to the vet; but maybe, perhaps we should let it sit for a while, we shan’t be brash or alarm the other babies (Baby Cakes, Baby Baby). Sometimes the very act of not writing or keeping it in my head is humbling; Being humble prevents disappointment, even if I am the only one ever reading. It is always more beautiful to imagine how I’d write, the medium through which I might transcribe it than to actually articulate it myself. Like I said, stepping off of the hamster wheel is hard. Tomorrow, I will hold one such hamster down on the table while he receives his treatment for urine scald, neglected for too long, without a wheel at all. By this time of night there was nothing going on anyhow, besides, she enjoyed the privacy, a real time to be with her thoughts with no distractions, to pitch prose to the paperback pages of her little book but likewise was annoyed by Devon’s disregard for any responsibility at all. She wondered why she cared so much anyhow, would it not be easier to live as he did? The friends in the freezer beside her were good at listening anyhow and the broken dryer lulled her thoughts in rhythm. Woosh-woosh-woosh and so on… Like a lullaby…Sleep begins to call her urgently, with a veracity, without the nagging yet stimulating presence of her co-worker. This has happened before but never with a body on the table. Astrid… snap out of it… The minute her eyelids pull themselves shut she peels them back equally as rapidly. Everything is the same. But where is the body on the table? “Jeez, I must be really tired,” she thinks to herself, figuring that Devon must have just taken care of it before leaving just a half an hour prior. It’s warm. The right side of Astrid’s seated body is pressed against the dryer. Warm towels on the table and on her lap. “Right, I was just folding the laundry…” she decides. She puts her face in the warm towels again and feels something underneath. Out from under the warm, bleach scented towels crawls out Baby Muffin with bright blue, vivacious eyes rather than fermented cold marbles. “Oh my god, oh my god,” Astrid mumbles to herself as she snaps her body up from its previously slouched position trying to believe her eyes. All of the sudden Baby Muffin crawls into her lap and begins purring, as warmly and rhythmically as the dryer. Astrid, too enveloped by the warmth surrounding her and the soothing sensorial script of the white dryer, white, towels, and white cat all warm, all surrounding her does not fight nor question what is happening to her. With a suave, slow swing upwards of her neck, Baby Muffin’s eyes met Astrid’s. “We aren’t so different, you and I. You humans, worry yourselves so much with your silly fake little titles, trying to figure out your ‘identity’ or ‘aesthetic’ instead of just existing.’Who am I?’ Get a grip, who the hell cares? I mean hey, look at me, I just exist as I am and you all scoop up my shit, brush me, treat me like a queen. And now, here you are about to immortalize my print in some oven bake clay and send me off neatly, in a sleek black bag cradling me in my fluffy, beloved bed-abode to transform my flesh into dust. And please, don’t look so scared, you and I both know you haven’t put me in the freezer yet, Devon is far too lazy to do you that favor before leaving.” “Wow,” Astrid was in mild shock and amazement at the beautiful specimen. With the speaking voice of what one imagines a siren would sound like, “the mushrooms have really cracked something in my brain for real.” Unsure of what to ask what is surely a descendent of the Cheshire cat, she simply poses the question: “So, what does it all mean then?” “It means that life is long and you need not do more than exist to have your shit scooped and be adorned and adored like me. Chill the fuck out! Write something beautiful that isn’t so damn sad, pencil in permanent impermanence, manipulate the mirage, and be belligerent with your boldness. Daily glimpses into momentary bliss are surely more satisfying than swimming in the abyss searching for meaning where it doesn't exist, live a little, kid.” With these potent parting words, the smell of rot returns, filling Astrid’s nostrils as Baby Muffin crawls back onto the table and lies down into her near fossilized white bed. Astrid’s head shoots up with a start and she gasps for breath inhaling a tumbleweed of white cat hair. She begins hacking. Baby Muffin’s paw is still reaching out of the plastic bag waiting to be autographed. Astrid feverishly grabs her styrofoam office coffee cup and greedily takes a sip of the lukewarm liquid which washes down the dead hairs. She wipes the sleep out of her eyes and sits bewildered, in utter shock, not thinking of anything or moving a muscle, staying as still as Baby Muffin’s enchanted corpse. Eventually, she peers behind her at the clock which reads: 5:50am. “Fuck! How long was I asleep for? Fuck! Ten minutes left of my shift,” she realizes with a start and begins tending to the task at hand, deciding she can think about her experience with this other-worldly entity once she can finally leave. Alone with Baby Muffin’s once again lifeless shell she takes the water-less soap and sprays it on her cold little beans slowly massaging out the cemented litter and varied collected layers of grime with a washcloth. After rolling out the gray clay, with more compassion and less disgust for her preliminary remains, she presses the once pink, little beans firmly into the substance. She would wait to inscribe her namesake gifted to her by Margaret into the clay under her imprint until tomorrow. Life is long, Astrid decided, such a thing could wait for her next shift but now, she must go home to return to dreamland. Astrid places Baby Muffin’s soft clay signature above the oven. She places her paw delicately back into the bag without looking at her body, only wishing to remember her with the vibrant crystal like ocean eyes which had come to her this evening. With the crisp snap of a zip tie, securing her, and her bed into their plastic hammock which will carry them on their journey to dust, Astrid gently carries Baby Muffin to the freezer and gingerly places her on the right shelf next to a sweet little puppy who had passed from Parvo days prior. “Goodbye, Baby Muffin,” Astrid imparted longingly out loud before shutting the heavy insulated door. Before leaving, after gathering up all of her things and finally, at long-last clocking out, she receives her notebook once more from her tote bag. Opening it to the page where a short few hours before she had wrote her rather negative, ill-inspired “prose”, in a fat red sharpie from the desk she proclaims in bold print: I AM NOT A HAMSTER Cass, a South Florida native is currently a rising senior at Clark University pursuing a double major in English and Spanish. This is her first (and hopefully not last) published short story. Find her on: Twitter: @cassiefras15 Instagram: @fromcass4u @cassiefras15

I can say now that maybe I shouldn’t have pestered the chef and irritated the hungry folks lined up and shuffling behind me in a queue like the one that snaked across the London Bridge to see The Queen in a quarter-tonne box, God knows how much embalming fluid plunged into her wizened purple veins to keep her from melting for, say, 10 requisite days. Had I been a monarchist and anywhere near the UK at the time of her demise, I’d’ve paid my respects at the very start of her lying-in-state so as not to face leaks from Her Majesty’s lead-lined casket. I’m a sensitive soul, fussy about substances, the kind of person who likes to know where my food comes from and what else is in it, which is how I know what a hammer looks like when it’s hurling toward my face, thrown like an Olympian wannabe by the pissed-off cook at Bob’s Best Byrgers and Fysh who probably keeps brass knuckles under his counter and mascaras his pubic hair: it’s a comet with a cold steel head, a hard hickory tail. And I can say now it’s not the greatest idea to question an underpaid, exhausted worker wearing a faux chef’s hat about the ingredients in the patties he’s flipping and what percentage of sodium and protein do they have per serving, because what does he know and besides his twirling hammer is speeding its way to my forehead, a cool whoosh of air heralding its imminent arrival and I can say right now I don’t really give a rat’s what’s in the goddamn burger, I duck. I’ve got dogs at home to feed. Mikki Aronoff’s work appears in New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Tiny Molecules, The Disappointed Housewife, Bending Genres, Milk Candy Review, Gone Lawn, Mslexia, The Dribble Drabble Review, The Citron Review, and elsewhere. She has received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.

I’m always so much smarter when I talk to you in my head a cinema smile, stars leaping off my tongue like kamikazes we never needed those seas foam between tables my hair down my shoulders again and frontiers fold in the sweet impairment of memory glinting between my lashes nights snatched from fate and dipped in chrome—a promise a picture of what might still be. In my head I am not afraid to touch your hand you touch me back your finger smoothing the creases of my agonies so I can barely speak. I can barely speak the damning syllable lodged in my throat deviant aigus ellipsing like gnats towards the lamp you swat one, standing, scanning figures, let’s go— and I empty before I remember you will be with me when I am alone Aishwarya Jha is a writer, designer and entrepreneur from New Delhi, India. Her work recently appeared in a digital anthology by Oxford University and is forthcoming in multiple literary journals, including Livina Press, Boats Against the Current and Isele Magazine. In another life, her award-winning one-act plays were performed around the world, in addition to being taught at workshops. Her debut novel will be published in 2024 and she is drafting her second as part of the Asian Women Writers programme.

The classic Irish mythology surrounding Étaín is one rooted in a feeling of excruciating envy; the bitterness of an old love set to destroy a new one, playing out over thousands of years and generations, sometimes with disastrous results for children born amid the fray. An optimist might argue that it illustrates love conquering all; a realist might add “but at a cost.” Either way, it is an ode to beauty in all its forms, from that which one wants for themselves to that which one cannot tolerate in someone else’s possession. Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and Other Poems by Oisín Breen explores these themes in detail, coupling mythology with natural elements and other magnificent wildness, illustrating the existence of things we desire but, despite our best efforts, may never fully obtain. Draped in equal parts longing and anger, death’s inevitable grip looms large over the speaker, but never quite enough to put the fiery flame of emotion out. Sometimes flowing and melodic, the rich metaphor ranges between lyrically dreamy and strikingly real, changing tone just when you think you know what to expect. Still, a rhythm carries forward in a collection that feeds seamlessly verse-to-verse. From III: Or it was where scoliosis stitches up once beautiful women into the shape of feuding Christmas birds; and where I once sat hammering out inconsistencies, where others fled to the soft arms of pretty girls as a means to find a rum-soaked chin-splitting escape that happened to the clock, every fourteen years; and where I held hands and felt whole, totally and utterly whole. ~ Here then, the beast is holy, the haar is holy, and holy too is the red honey, so too are lips, each others’, especially yours, for which I have such a thirst. From A Chiaroscuro of Hunger I was tired then, worn out by hundreds of poor choices, And passions that burnt red hot, only to turn white hot, And sunder skin from bone, prompting the perennial Reassembling of fragments of a jigsaw puzzle, That, at times, resembles my face. From love and hate in all their forms to the shades that live in between, this work lays itself clear and bare without falling into a trap of predictability. Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and Other Poems offers a complete and three-dimensional examination of reckoning, with oneself or with others, about the possession and loss of beauty; what we want, what we’ll do to get it, and what it feels like when we don’t. A word from the publisher: Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín and Other Poems by @Breen is out on @beirbuapress and can be purchased here: https://beirbuapress.com/2023/01/01/lilies-on-the-deathbed-of-etain-and-other-poems-by-oisin-breen/

I have seen suffering It even has a scent You tip your poison and gulp the numb Words slow, steps falter Pitch changes, eyes flutter Rock bottom does not exist when you’re always searching for the bottom of the bottle The merry-go-round circles again Dizzying for us both, too fast to get off I tell you things and you pretend to remember You were there but not here Double letters exist to help you The stale coffee, echoes of support But what about those who don’t anesthetize, the ones who remember it all? A caregiver should not be a child Now I have dysfunction, too Codependent, it’s called I try and fix things, to control I’m only trying to help Boundaries mean nothing when they’ve been trampled, invisible The cycle starts over you were doing so good I dive in to save you I hold you as I swim to shore I’m kicking for both of us Don’t you want to live? The burden is too heavy to hold My body shakes with adrenaline Crisis strikes again Maybe it’s my drug of choice now all thanks to you I thought I could save you, it’s all I want But I can no longer carry us both You have to swim, too My face tilts for oxygen, the water laps my face I’m in over my head now It may be too late There’s no chance I can save you If I hang on, we both drown You anchor me to this deep abyss But if I let go, maybe I can save myself Natalie Nee is a bibliophile, graduate of Colorado State University, former ghostwriter, and latte enthusiast. She is passionate about creating stories that provoke both thought and emotion. Her debut novel, a domestic thriller, will be going out on submission in 2023. Her poem, Unnoticed, was just accepted with Half and One. When she's not writing or getting lost in a book, you can find her with fam enjoying life. She’s cooler on Twitter @WriterNatalieN.

One night, I got on my hands and knees and crawled back to the night that boy flung his tongue down my throat. All around me, massive caverns kept opening and opening. His fingernails dug tunnels under my skin as his tongue slid down the walls of my lungs, planted leeches in my stomach, then slithered back to suck on my youngest cavity. Later, as we pretended to sleep, his hands planted orchids in my wrists as our taste buds bloomed. Those leeches fed on absolute blackness until I starved myself so dry they suffocated on air, and once I knew they were dead, I filled every hole in my body with salt and vinegar until nothing grew back. I crawled into the cave behind that boy’s couch the first night you slid your hand up my shirt, and my whole body opened and opened as you touched the youngest part of me. Robin Arble is a poet and writer from Western Massachusetts. Her poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Oakland Arts Review, beestung, Door Is A Jar, Pøst-, One Art,Overheard, ALOCASIA, Midway Journal, and Your Impossible Voice, among others. They are a poetry reader for Beaver Magazine and the Massachusetts Review. She studies literature and creative writing at Hampshire College.

I mostly just want to talk about this one Mountain Goats song. It came out pretty recently, but I’ve listened to it a hundred times because I think my gender is just that song. I told my evening manager at the Taco Bell about it when we were closing the other night. “There’s this line, it goes ‘Stay independent, make adjustments as needed, it’s losers all the way down, you stay undefeated.’ Such an asshole thing to say, and I love it so much. Am I just another toxic man?” She shrugged as she counted cash. “Do you think you are?” “If I knew, I wouldn’t have to ask you.” “You’re not a man. I don’t think you can be a toxic man if you aren’t a man in the first place, right?” She was right, but it still worried me. Was there such a thing as nonbinary toxicity? “Do you think I should cut my hair?” “Do you think you should?” I threw a rag at her. “It’s like you don’t get the point of me asking you questions.” “Jesus, it’s your hair. Do what you want.” My apartment is terrible, so I figured it wouldn’t matter too much if I cut my hair in the bathroom. My roommate disagreed when he saw all of my coarse bleached hair coating the tile. “Are you using my razor?” he asked in disbelief. “Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t think you’d mind.” “You should have asked. It’s two in the fucking morning. Can’t you go to sleep?” “Gender waits for no man.” I turned my newly shorn head around, trying to see every angle. “Can you fix the back?” He’s a pushover, which I knew when we moved in together. I haven’t had to clean the toliet once in six months. He took the razor and cleaned up the back of my head. “I have a history exam tomorrow,” he muttered. “Can’t we at least listen to a different song?” “No.” The next day I returned to my workplace and my evening manager raised her eyebrows. “Glad to see you can make a decision on your own. Looks good.” It didn’t, actually, but it did make me feel good, which I guess matters almost as much. A few queer customers throughout the evening smiled at me, that secret look we give each other that is really nothing more than an acknowledgment of existence. But that matters. “Can I play you the song?” I asked my evening manager when it was eleven-thirty and we were getting ready to close. “No.” “Okay.” I played it anyway, right before we parted ways for the night. She didn’t like it nearly as much as I did. I got home at one in the morning and did my homework for an hour. When I turned in my Statistics problem set the next day, the TA looked at me in shock. “Oh. Thanks.” She didn’t have to say that she’d given up on me ever doing my homework. That night I worked with the alternate manager, who actually is a toxic man, and for some reason I couldn’t stop making self-deprecating jokes just to get him to laugh at me. “You’re funny, for a girl,” he said before he got into his car. I opened my mouth to correct him, but just grinned instead. My roommate was cuddling on the couch with his partner when I got home, both of them actually drunk, and he invited me to join them. I like her well enough, and she’s my only trans friend. I don’t have many friends in the first place. I sat next to her and put my head on her shoulder. “So what is masculinity?” I asked them. “Can it be separated from all the bad stuff?” My roommate giggled. “No. I don’t think so. Maybe you’re an asshole because you’re transmasc.” His partner elbowed him. “Jesus, don’t be a dick. They’re not an asshole.” To me, she said, “Gender is just a collection of aesthetics and feelings. There’s some kind of masculinity outside of the toxic kind, I think. I know tons of men who are fine. Some who are great.” “But are they masculine?” I pushed. “Or are they fine because they’re not masculine? What if all I want is power?” “Do you want power?” she asked. “How come no one understands how questions work?” My roommate spoke up, and his voice reflected the several empty wine cooler bottles on the floor. “I hate being a man. I’m fine looking like one, but I can’t stand being one.” “Maybe you aren’t one,” I told him. His partner winked at me. “We’re working on it.” I didn’t work the next night, but I ended up at work anyway, after a very good date. My evening manager was behind the register, and she raised her eyebrows at me. “What are you doing here?” “Getting burritos,” I grinned. I was arm in arm with my date, who was as tipsy as I was. We looked at each other and laughed. “Just one, actually. We’ll split it.” My date, as he told me, had been on T for four years. He had several earrings and a respectable beard, both of which I envied. I asked him what he thought masculinity meant, and he shrugged. “It’s nice to feel like I can live in my skin,” he said. “Does that make sense? I don’t think of it much beyond that.” “Let me play you this song I’ve been obsessed with.” He didn’t get it, and I figured maybe I’m doomed, but it felt good when he kissed me in the parking lot. C. M. Green is a Boston-based writer who spends all their time thinking about history, memory, religion, and messy transmascs. The latter obsession is the subject of this short story about Taco Bell and masculinity.

Jesus, it was hot in Finn’s attic studio, hotter than it should have been by any reasonable right on any reasonable winter’s day. But Bloody Mary downstairs had cranked up her heating higher than any reasonable person should. He stooped to the floor to listen. Nothing. Where had the skulking crone gone? How artfully he had sneaked into the Hammersmith house an hour ago to avoid being ambushed by ‘aren’t you just the marvel’ Mary, yet somehow his sex-for-a-studio landlady still knew he’d arrived. Sure, he’d be ‘just the marvel’ if she hadn’t driven Tabia away yesterday with her shrieks and caws. Wasn’t it enough for Mary to have banished his muse without today’s attempt at driving him out with this shitting heat? He went to the window and cracked open the painted hinges. The sharp winter air whacked him in the face. “Jealous bitch,” he called and then paused to cough out the frost that caught in his throat. Curvaceous Tabia. Gorgeous Tabia. Oh Tabia. Chilled traffic fumes gritted his eyes. He turned to his jumble of paints and readied his palette with stripes of alizarin crimson, burnt umber and lamp black. A blotch of turps followed by a swipe of brush through the paint and, tra laa, could that be a smear of optimism? Could be. A glug of turps. Tabia, his creative soul. So ready to be herself, so simple. What right did studio-for-a-fuck Mary have to interfere? “Cavorting as though he has no wife,” Bloody Mary had yelled. “For shame!” Wife? Since when did painting in someone’s attic form a sacred bond? The Devil’s hag, more like. A globule of sweat dripped from his nose. “What the hell are you burning down there?” Finn yelled. “Your spite?” The wind whistled and the drub of a pausing cab rose from the street. Thank Christ the breeze was picking up. A crack or was it a cackle? How tickled Mary would be at her ironic twist on freezing an artist from his garret. Ah well, if she insisted on wasting her money on heating the whole fucking universe, so be it. A fresh sheet of cartridge paper, a newly prepared palate and, as turpentine evaporated through Finn, Tabia’s absence swelled in his bereft core, propelling his hand. How readily the brush’s bristles now bent, curving with the urban breeze. Tendrils flurried across the paper, dispersing like the tributaries from an estuary seeking their ditch sources. A caress of turps et voilà, a set of ruins rose on the shore and a man materialised. More strokes, and luscious Tabia, glorious Tabia, salsa-ed into the scene to join the man who had morphed into a king, a god, no, the one true artist. Astonishing, astounding. How visionary was that! A louder crack and the turpentine bottle toppled, sparking red. Flames trickled across the floor and up the easel leg, quickening the painting. And lo, out of the paper pirouetted a three-dimensional Tabia, her palms eager to press his face and soothe his pacing guts. This creation was truly phenomenal. Eureka. Bloody eureka! “Go finger yourself, witch,” he yelled. “You have not won!” And as the air sirened and tangoed, he and Tabia shimmied onto the floor to writhe in the tranquilising scent of artistic fulfilment. Ruth Brandt’s prize-winning short story collection No One has any Intention of Building a Wall was published by Fly On The Wall Press in November 2021. She won the Kingston University MFA Creative Writing Prize, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Write Well Award and Best Small Fictions Award. She tutors creative writing and lives in Surrey, England with her husband and has two delightful sons.

Mid-August, my parents dragged me out to watch my sister, Jackie, lose the championship to Tackett’s Auto Supply. Even in early twilight the ridges of the aluminum bleachers held enough heat to burn the bottoms of my legs. Whirls of bugs clustered around gangs of 1500-watt lights. I worried that one would carom off and flutter, broken and chalky, into my Coke; I kept my hand over the top until I finished it. They told me she went 2 for 3. Back in June, Dad “encouraged” me to skip a piano lesson with Mrs. Fant and try out for Jackie’s Dixie Youth team. One afternoon I followed her a short mile to Andrews Field. I could never keep up; even though Jackie outgrew her mountain bike two years ago she refused to pass it on, consigning me to her exhausted ten-speed with squealing brakes, handlebar tape that flaps in the wind, and a scuffed leather saddle that’s hard in all the wrong places. I leaned my bike next to hers on the chain link fence and tightened the drawstring on my shorts. “Got any advice for me?” Jackie took off her Braves cap, re-creased the red brim, then pulled it snug. Dad bought the hat on our family trip to Atlanta to see the home of Hank Aaron and Chipper Jones and Dale Murphy. Real wool and sized to fit. Momma asked why Jackie needed a $40 hat; Dad just said, “A real player needs a real cap” as sure and final as his other child-rearing apothegms, like “Boys don’t wear pink” and “Children are made to be seen and not heard.” She looked across the freshly-cut grass, bright green before the Mississippi summer drained the life out of it. “Don’t suck.” Coach Ronnie smacked Jackie’s shoulder when she walked up. She’s the only girl on Johnson Bottling but he knew she had shortstop covered cold. “Who’s this, Jack?” “My little brother. Bobbie.” She waved her glove in my direction. “Glad to have you,” Coach Ronnie said. A lump of chew clung to his left lower canine when he smiled. I nodded, even though I knew I was not the brother he hoped I was. Jackie took the field with the starters while I milled around with the new kids, caps pulled down earnestly to show they’re ball players. I didn’t have a hat. My glasses kept slipping down my nose when I tried to bat. I managed to hit a weak grounder straight at the mound; I did not manage to run it out. Jackie shrugged. “Maybe fielding is your thing.” Coach Ronnie put me in right field. Dad’s high school number 17 was painted in crisp, white letters on the fence boards. I stood around a while, appreciating the symmetry of the lines mowed into the grass. After a few to the infield, Coach called to me. “Ready?” I pushed my glasses up and nodded. I lost two fly balls in the blue—ran up too far then waved my glove as they thudded behind me. Finally, he cracked a blur just inside the baseline. I stepped to my left, then lost track of the ball until it slammed into my hip. I spent the rest of practice sipping cold water from a soggy paper cone and wincing whenever someone looked over. Over the next week, the circle on my bone turned purple, then blue, and eventually an unsettling shade of green. When I didn’t make the team, Dad said I had problems with depth perception, probably from Momma’s side of the family. The season’s over, but Jackie’s got her Dixie All Stars game tomorrow, so our parents went to Safeway to get chips and root beer for the potluck. “Jack, you’re in charge,” Dad said as they left. I want to watch cartoons, but Jackie wants to ride, so we pedal through the thick Delta morning, down Spruce to Cuyahoga, past the old high school and across the bridge to downtown. By the time I bump over the cracked yellow curb on the corner of Yazoo and First, she is leaning against the bright blue wall of J.C. Penney. She pushes off, twists a narrow branch from the oak that clings to life in the packed dirt by the sidewalk and beats a staccato rhythm against her right leg. I lean my bike against the bricks. “What’s that for?” I ask. “To use on you if you don’t shut up.” She shakes the twig at me. A leaf detaches, glides to the concrete. “No, really.” “I’m gonna stick it in the escalator, see what happens.” Satisfied with her explanation, she heads in. I like the escalator. When Momma brings me here, I steal moments to watch the steps fold and unfold, hypnotized by the rhythmic meshing and parting. I can feel the calculations involved in making it work. The air conditioning shocks my legs, still sheening from humidity and exertion. I shiver and stop. “Move it, Bobbie!” She drags me down linoleum aisles bordered with carousels of bras and panties that make my neck itch. I know better than to fight. Jackie lives up to her name; a lanky thirteen, she can line a ball into center, sink a turnaround, and hop her mountain bike over a stump. I trail in her wake. The cover is off one of the escalators and a repairman is rooting in the void. I was ready to go back out into the heat, maybe sneak a snow cone, but Jackie tucks the stick behind a pile of crisp yellow oxfords. walks over, leans against the black rubber handrail, and pops her gum until the man stops. “Need something?” She pops again and shakes her head. He looks at her, then goes back to wrestling with a piece of metal enrobed in thick grease. I come a few steps closer and look over the repairman’s shoulder at the mystery of chains and gears. He glances up. “Chain’s slipping.” He points at something, and seems to expect me to understand, so I nod. I push my glasses up. “We want to ride the escalator,” Jackie says, then resumes chewing. I don’t have her facility for knowing how to talk straight to the men who do mysterious things with their hands; I look at the grease in the cracks of their fingers and my tongue freezes. “You can still ride the other one. Down.” He doesn’t look at her. “No fun if we gotta take the stairs to get up there.” “Then, you’ll have to wait until I’m done.” He pulls a dirty red rag from his back pocket and wipes something until it shines. A crescent wrench lays off to the side. Jackie moves it a few inches with her blue Converse. She has drawn stars on the white rubber toes with Magic Marker. The man stops wiping and looks at her again. She absorbs his glare like a pond being warmed by the sun. He picks up the wrench and sets it in his toolbox. His walkie-talkie squawks from his belt, unintelligible and loud. He sighs, puts the rag back in his pocket and levers himself up with stiff knees. He glances at us, then turns away and starts talking. I pull Jackie’s elbow. “Let’s go, Jackie.” “Hold your horses.” She grins like she does when she leaves me behind, knees hitting her elbows as she hunches to pedal. Jackie braces on the end of the handrail and leans over. She straightens quickly as the mechanic looks back. His eyes rest on her for a second, trying to weigh how much trouble she can be. He decides wrong. He turns away again and presses the speaker against his ear as he struggles to make out the important parts. Jackie smiles, leans over, and opens her mouth. The wad of gum hangs on her teeth for a moment, then tumbles into the opening. She bends further to watch it land and her Braves hat slips off and falls into the maw of silently spinning gears. Jackie moves smooth and sure like a middle-distance runner. She has the hat by the brim when the upper chain clunks into place and catches the teeth of the gears. The escalator bumps and jerks. The hat wraps into the tight space between the steps. Jackie’s hand follows the soiled blue-and-red wool into the darkness. Teeth of flat silver reach for her fingers. “Jackie!” My leg muscles clench like I’m too close to the edge of a cliff. I almost feel the soundless tug on her arm as her hand is pulled along into the waiting teeth. There isn’t the slightest slowing of the mechanism as the stairs move as gently and smoothly as a procession of ocean swells. One step now carries three fingers and a dappling of blood up and away from us. Jackie stares at them as if she’s watching a second basemen take her feed to turn a double play. She backs up and sits down heavily next to the escalator. Cold air surrounds new sweat as I watch the mechanic grab a shirt from the display and wrap the stumps of Jackie’s fingers. Jackie turns pale as she looks at her useless throwing hand. Even her hair is limp. “Get Dad.” Her voice trembles the slightest. The man is holding Jackie’s swaddled stump. He has forgotten about his walkie-talkie, which has gotten splats of bright blood on its black plastic. I nod as the emptiness swallows my stomach. I stare at the fingers as they reach the top; they tumble and gyre as the silver steps push them against the black bristles that keep trash out of the mechanism. I think they wave at me. “Go get help!” he barks. I turn and run through the aisles past the shirts, past the ties, past the panties. I dodge an old man and slam the front door open. Huffing outside, her mountain bike seems to glow in a spray of light bouncing from the bricks. I grab it and buck off the curb. My fingers flex on the knobby handgrips, warm from the sun. My feet nestle into the toe clips. The padded foam cradles all the spots that my familiar leather saddle doesn’t. It’s a good five minutes to Safeway; I can see Dad’s face when I tell him I did it in three. I shift gears, stand on the pedals, and disappear under the arching oak trees as my tires hum. Stuart is a recovering lawyer and expatriate Mississippian, now living in the Mohawk Valley of New York. He was previously EIC of Causeway Lit, and currently serve as Fiction Editor for the Veterans' Writing Project. He is published in Emerge Literary Journal, Reckon Review, and elsewhere.

Misandry I’ve known too many men who are only brave about the wrong things and whose swarm of tiny silences over dinner cram their way down my throat and fill me up so that by dessert, I can push away my untouched plate and say I’m full. So I guess what I mean to tell these men is Thank you. Now my bikini body will blow your dick off. If only I could scrape up some gratitude for the little things, I could journal my way to equanimity, which is basically equality if you squint at the right dude’s op-ed. Yes, if only I were grateful-as-an-aesthetic. (Because doesn’t everything look fab in that font?) If only I could gaze into their cocoon eyes and respond with grace— “choose joy”— if only, like they do, I believed that the important part of benign misogyny was the word benign. If only I were mad in the right register. Because not all men can hear the shrieking over the constant dog whistles. And that’s my bad, really. There are always problems if you’re looking for them, silly. Comparison. The thief. All that. The plan Some nights the plan is just to come home and gulp cold wine on an empty stomach; to let the monuments mean what they mean, let the tape run out and flick its tail in the player; to walk away and realize that you didn’t implode, you didn’t even die, you didn’t even fall over once on the damp sidewalk, licked by wet leaves and ignored by passersby who don’t mourn in your language. No. You wept quietly walking through the streets, blurring the Christmas lights, the Beaux-Arts streetlamps, and pressed the web of your hand to your nose like an adult. Like someone who understood that maybe the real tragedy is the bittersweet way that life does indeed go on. Shannon Deep writes poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction—and tries not to be a cliché while doing so even though she’s an American expat living in Paris, France. Her poems have appeared in The Shine Journal and Print Oriented Bastards, her fiction in The Grief Diaries, and her personal essays in The Huffington Post, Narratively, xoVain, Quarter Life Crisis, and elsewhere.