April wind flirts with my cowlick as I chat up a pinecone in this sleepy blue hour filled with dog walks and grocery bags. The wind wants to hear the story of my first kiss. I beg off.
Poem by Caleb Bouchard
Image by Adam Strong
Caleb Bouchard is the author of The Satirist (Suburban Drunk Press 2023). His poems have recently appeared in The Laurel Review, Litro, Rejection Letters, and Salamander. He lives outside Atlanta where he teaches college-level writing. Find him on Instagram @calebbouchard.
I like the way you hug you squeeze me like an almost-empty ketchup bottle to wring the last sputter of my worth. We spent one laborious summer in the sun, almost burnt in cigarettes. You walked your boss’s dog and your boss walked you on trails we walked by the river. Walked us. Communion with the trees, canopy shade, we looked to the river, in those moments endless.
Poem by James Croal Jackson
Image by Adam Strong
James Croal Jackson works in film production. His most recent chapbooks are Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022) and Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021). Recent poems are in Stirring, SAND, and Vilas Avenue. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)
A boy lifts your skirt at playtime. “Fuck off” you spit, instinct marinated in experience. He does, in shock, like you over-reacted to finding him innocently glancing around your bedroom. Later, you’re called to Ms Brokken’s desk for swearing. She weights the two acts equally: you both stay back and get lines. The world tilts askew: your 8- year-old girl’s feet will never stand on level ground again. Ms. Brokken inspects and cleans the board, giving you and your assailant ‘tabula rasa.’ “You won’t do that again?” She looks at you. No, you shake your head. You’ll do worse.
Micro by Bayveen O’Connell
Image by Adam Strong
Bayveen O’Connell is an Irish writer whose flash fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and for Best Microfiction. Her words have appeared or are forthcoming in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Janus Literary, Splonk, MacQueens Quinterly, The Ekphrastic Review, The Forge, Fractured Lit, and others. She’s inspired by travel, folklore, history, myth, music, and art
Christine H. Chen was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Madagascar before settling in Boston where she worked as a research chemist. Her fiction work has been published in CRAFT Literary, Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly, Gordon Square Review, Pidgeonholes, trampset, and other literary journals. She is the co-translator of the hybrid memoir-novel of My Lemon Tree (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) and a recipient of the 2022 Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Her publications can be found at www.christinehchen.com
The Universe, your dad, sometimes wear his hat a little too late / appear in his blue Volvo when the storm has had its full of you, and you’re a spilled mass of blue dress on your classmate’s doorstep after a birthday party, or your naming ceremony / one in which you were given a name you’d rather not repeat to something as lifeless as the doll you own.
He would wrap his hands around you, sing you a song about a girl who learned to trust her wings, and tame the winds. He would wash a smile up your face with impressions, while you bob your head to “This Little Light Of Mine” when the traffic light turns a bright red.
You would make a promise, the third that week, that you’d never make friends because they hold storms in them. Urged by the universe to wear your Elsa dress, and your combats. To “freeze the world, and stop ‘em,” you would go to school. Psyche pilled off, and sitting in the corner of an empty classroom, he’d pick your frozen and combats body, and you’d listen to “This Little Light Of Mine” again when the light turns red.
Micro by Sunmisola Odusola
Photo by Adam Strong
Sunmisola Odusola is a young Nigerian writer whose short story is forthcoming from Brittle Paper.
We tittered over words like bosoms and knockers and jugs, peed our pants giggling over Venus de Willendorf, fretted over the possibility of our own boobs hanging low someday like Gram’s, conducted pencil tests. We graduated from hopscotch to wincing from brain freeze at Dairy Queen to heavy petting with all the wrong boys in semi-public places to barely passing driver’s ed. Sniffing cheap perfume in the mall, we pretended to be French, flaunting gestures and accents we imagined Parisian, never thinking we’d be more credible speaking the actual language. We thought we were traveling in a straight line. Decades on, whiskey on the rocks in hand, we cry “uncle” as gravity takes us down. As starlight bends, lays foundations for darkness, we rock in silence and stare.
Micro by Mikki Aronoff
Image by Adam Strong
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, Atlas and Alice, trampset, jmww,, and elsewhere. She’s received Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction nominations.
Whenever the fire engines wailed their warnings, Mom came alive, eyes flashing, and Dad glanced up with that far-away smile before drifting back into his head where he mostly lived. But we’d jump into the car with Mom to chase that campfire-gone-mad smell and throbbing red lights. From afar we watched the little men in yellow rubber coats and fireman hats climbing miniature ladders as in a videogame but with real smoke ballooning, brilliant blasts of amber soaring skyward, the inevitable collapse to embers. Perhaps this fire-lust foretold the day our family would snap like sparks swirling and drifting away.
Micro by Kathryn Silver-Hajo
Photo by Adam Strong
Kathryn Silver-Hajo is a 2023 Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing nominee. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Atticus Review, The Citron Review, CRAFT, Emerge Literary Journal, New York Times-Tiny Love Stories, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary and others. Kathryn’s flash collection “Wolfsong” and her novel “Roots of The Banyan Tree” are both forthcoming in 2023. She is a reader for Fractured Lit. More at: kathrynsilverhajo.com; twitter.com/KSilverHajo; instagram.com/kathrynsilverhajo
Father felled an oak to build an ark for the flood that would wash away the world. Mother mourned the tree, the dryads she swore burrowed in the antiquated avenues of its hardwood grain. The world never ended, but Mother did, whose grief spread like cancer, like the roots of an ancient oak.
Poem by James Callan
Photo by Adam Strong
James Callan grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, New Zealand on a small farm with his wife, Rachel, and his little boy, Finn. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bridge Eight, White Wall Review, Maudlin House, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. His novel, A Transcendental Habit, is available with Queer Space.
for all the skinny lovely wistful brilliant brave unread poetry collections out there with their spines leaning left or right or maybe posture perfectly straight like our own beloved children standing at attention chin up chest out name tag showing or else horizontal piled supine like the dead like so much dust collecting dust
Poem by Paul Hostovsky
Image by Adam Strong
Paul Hostovsky’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter. Website: paulhostovsky.com
Backwards Trajectory 