FALL 2022

Waiting
​BY HANNAH WAND

My 16-year-old thighs stuck to the blue vinyl airport seat. Sweat dripped into the hollows behind my knees. I should have been doing the chemistry homework that sits in my backpack, or at least reading a book, but I couldn’t force my mind to focus. Too many PA announcements and crying babies. Instead, I swiped animated fruit into lines of three, watching them disappear, new fruit falling to fill its place. An animated gardener jumped for joy on the sidelines. Fantastic job!

We Fall Forwards
BY SEBASTIÁN AMADOR

While he mulls over the wheat field and pays madness for it, how are we to occupy ourselves? I offer you one of the stories he lived through in his head. Our intention is to better understand the nature of the protagonist, no? So we would have to examine some episode of his fantasy, to make good use of it... Since that is very well our intention–I will reveal–I will tell you whatever, and you will be forever grateful.

The Little Doe
BY KRISHNA RAJESH​

Noctiluca phantasma. Common name Ghost Silk. It grows at the bottom of long-forgotten ponds, glowing an ethereal blue when the night arrives. Left alone, it does nothing but exist, fated to wither away as it needs far more nutrients than it can get. Alone, without a host, it cannot survive. But if given the chance to grow, the moss is more resilient than any other of its kind.

Ptolomaea
BY ANNASOPHIA NICELY 

For my tenth birthday, Uncle Nathan took me to the orchard to shoot the family dog. A hissing, crackling wind snuck through the orchard like a long blowout of a pipe. Smoke from a distant chimney mingled with the sulfurous smell of the gunpowder, adding an astringency to the bloody salt of the fall air. The heavy cream of winter was near, the rot settling as a distant memory.

Tomato Babies
BY MARY COLLINS​

    The germination period marks the beginning of life. When the seed awakens and begins to transform. A mother buries it in the dirt. It’s kept warm, watered, and in darkness. But soon it begins to sprout, breaching the earth and grasping for light. ​

Kristen from Wednesdays
BY RUTHIE ZOLLA

​Kristen from Wednesdays messages me on Facebook, “Hi sorry if this is weird but I'd love to send you a candle if you're up for sharing a shipping address  -Kristen from Wednesdays”.

Prima Donna 
BY ISABELLE ORINGER
​

Prima DonnaNo one could remember exactly when Prima Donna arrived. She came and went as she pleased, reappearing at odd hours of the night. When she was home, Prima Donna clung to us like a parasite, drinking our money and trampling our patience. Sometimes she disappeared into the attic and refused to come down for days at a time. 

​

 This Bird Flies in Diminishing Circles
BY R. M. Corbin

He is reclined, ten feet off the ground, his rump and shoulders sinking back and down away from him into the tower of dried tobacco. Sweet, floral, only just moist from the evening air. “Aye. That’s right, it’s right, it’s good.” In his right hand a cigarette, hand-rolled, the hand draped into the center of his chest. “It’s good, I say.”

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SPRING 2022

Laugh me to bed
BY ALEXANDRA DU MANOIR

Arterial Yearning
BY MAYA OLSON

Words Fail
​BY AVA LEDES

Laugh me to bedI once whispered a secret to my friend while we were hiding under my bed in second grade. There was a ball in my throat, hair in my teeth, and spiders on my skin, so I couldn’t get the words out just right. I still tried. I mumbled, biting my tongue, “I think my mom is possessed.” Sweat trickled down my palms, and dancers were engaging in trapeze routines in my organs. My friend laughed, “That’s not real.” My whole body convulsed, and my tears built up behind my pupil dams, “That’s why we have to hide. She’s coming back soon, and at night, she gets possessed.” ​

I wish you would bleed for me. I scratch at you, slowly, softly, slicing all day waiting to see a mark, to get more than I'm privy to. What is behind the walls of your skin? I’d peel you apart to crawl inside. Your skin rips apart, and finally I can get a taste of your insides, scour the enigma of your brain, peel you apart layer by layer, more, more, more. Is this what love is? A craving never satiated? To have you on my skin never enough, only satisfied when I am suffocated by your presence. I wish you had the same need to pull back my eyelids, to scratch off my skin just to know what’s underneath it. When I find your cuts and bruises, I only can poke and prod to have more to taste. I love you so much I’m terrified it could destroy you, imploding me in the process. 

​

Even before I had language, I was a pot boiling over with countless thoughts and interjections, intent on disrupting the silent rhythm of our world. My family has always referred to my chitter chatter as baby babble. Allegedly, before I learned to ‘properly’ talk, I attempted communication via incomprehensible sing-song noises in glee— something along the lines of bibbitybaplippitylooplooloobable accompanied with spits and shrieks— for up to ten minutes at a time. Of course I have no recollection of said phenomena. We’ve failed to uncover the few recordings and despite my parents’ best efforts to elaborate, it’s always come down to It was your own language, Ava, impossible to truly mimic. You had to be there. Still, I know with certainty all of this occurred as it was told.

​

ghosts
​BY MIKAELA KIMPTON

the night air smells of clementines, fresh laundry, lilac and lemons 
and perhaps the whiff of a threatened skunk 
and Old Spice Timber deodorant 
but no longer of constant campfire 
​​

Akrasia in Hawaii 
BY K.D. WALKER

The honeymoon should have been called something else. In Hawaii, the young couple barely saw the moon and instead laid out in the sun for as long as they could until it saturated their skin and gave them permanent freckles on their shoulders.
​​

she just moved to LA
BY JEREMY MARTIN

It is 1:00 in the morning on a Saturday night, I am in a UCLA In-N-Out Burger, and I want a strawberry milkshake. I’m going to get a #3 combo (raw onions, hold the tomato) and I want a strawberry milkshake.

Prowl
BY PATRICK LEWIS

The year is 1922, and in this sleepy Michigan hamlet the night of the first snow has brought silence to the world. The powder piles deeply around each oaken home, where it shifts mystically by faint firelight or gleams in the newer electric glare. 
​​​

on corporeality
​BY FIA MENG

The thing about living with ghosts is that you start to feel half corporeal yourself.
​​

out of convenience 
​BY ASHLEY CHENG

We’re sitting at the counter of a 7-Eleven in Kaohsiung when she says it, nonchalant and contained in equal amounts, like a recipe that calls for ¼ cup of cream and ¼ cup of brown sugar so you can measure them out and only wash one vessel. ​

unquenchable
​BY FIA MENG​

A car approaches, sounding like it’s devouring the earth. Like it is something unquenchable. 
​​

Crushed Bone
BY LOUIS BURNS

He slipped the note into his pocket and left the library. He turned to look where he was sitting to make sure he left nothing behind. The guy across the table looked up and smiled. Toothy and winsome.
​

Prior Review
BY BEN REICHER

“Well, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what this is about,” Ms. Tinker says as Isabel and I sit down in the two chairs in front of her desk. “I just wanted to debrief, after yesterday’s meeting with the dean, to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
​

supermarket assimilation
BY VALERIE BRAYLOVSKIY

I bought a grapefruit today. After a four-month hiatus from the supermarket. Time created a yearning for errands I once dreaded. ​

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FALL 2021
​

Dispassionate
BY JANA GASKIN

Screech!
The metal door scraped open as a man stumbled into the almost-empty bar. This converted warehouse wasn't his usual spot, with its mixed clientele and rough edges, but it wasn't safe to frequent a more elegant venue right now.
​

You Hope the World Says Yes: An Interview with My Older Brother
​BY REIA LI

I say, I'm Gretis. I’m a 23-year-old tennis coach, older brother, quirky, introverted, deep-thinking, raving, rapping, weed-smoking, overthinking, vibrant person.

Don't ask me how many hats I have.
​

Golden Shores
BY JULIEN A. LUEBBERS

The dining room rung a hollow dry ring as Beatrice pushed toast crumbs around the circumference of a ceramic plate, pressing them into near-crested sound waves.
​

The Old Man
BY JACOB ZIMMERMAN

There was a log between the stopping spots. The dock was open and the old man knew that it was impossible to resist six months when he had gone in the sun; he had always thought it out as a little distance.
​

The Walk
​BY CHLOE ORTIZ

My sister cries every day on our walk home from school, and every day I don’t comfort her. We lean into the steep streets with no sidewalks and no words between us.
​

People I Met in Acting Class
​BY JEFFREY PENDO

In the depths of Hollywood, between a Gold’s gym and an experimental photography studio, I walked into a driveway filled with plastic chairs. Framed plastic panels formed a T-shape against the edge of the property, and propping them up were two recycling bins filled with stones.

Food Chain
BY KRYSTAL YANG

I didn’t know you had a hummingbird in your throat until I kissed you in the library the day before graduation. (Now this, this you still make fun of me for it, even after all these years.
​

On the Multiplicity of Eggs
​BY LUCY PADDOCK

The first egg was found in the center of a sunken Bass Pro Shops in southern Florida by a research submarine on an unofficial scavenging expedition. The two divers, who have requested to remain unnamed...
​

Dawn of the Cat Lady
BY AJ JOLISH

Standing outside the kitchen room at the animal shelter, Jane fiddled with the three twenty dollar bills in her jacket pocket. The kittens hadn't been her first stop.

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SPRING 2021
​

The Skull Painting
BY TALIA IVRY

On the wall behind her he noticed a small painting of an animal skull. It must have been some kind of bull or elk or something, because it had long curving horns that extended almost to the edges of the frame. 
​

Ammunition Sky
​BY DREW PRONOVOST

Eddie had decided not to acknowledge the end of the world. If the bombs were coming, he might as well ignore them. People would die whether they screamed or sunbathed, he supposed, so fear would do nothing.

Nesting
BY AJ DYKENS-HODAPP

Home was the same. It felt like nothing had been moved, which is how I wanted it to feel. Mom was seated on a red wicker knitting, and staring through the window at the bird garden.

Bejeweled
 BY LINDA HUANG

The assortment of colors studded own her back shimmered forcing a reconfiguration of the rainbow into a story she could no longer recognized. Watching the different lights shift reminded me of the first time I flew across the country.

Limbo
BY NASIRA WATTS

She pressed the damp towel against her grandmother's face, the wetness of the fabric blending with the clamminess of the woman's old withered visage. if her eyes were open the granddaughter could not tell, for they were always housed beneath layers of wrinkles.
​

The Pond
BY OWEN HOFFSTEN

We walk in the brush along the side of the pond and try to feel good about ourselves. I am young out here, in the middle of the woods, where no one can see me but her. The only thing standing between me and old age is being seen—framed by a gaze that will follow me everywhere as soon as I step off the land. 

MOKA POT SERIES
BY LAYLA ELQUTAMI

She considered their love, until the coffee boiled over, finished. An espresso shot is always only for one. Forever. Singular in its interpretation. This was a careful act. Like poetry.

Something Missing
BY ELLA ROSENBLATT

WINTER

The wind bit at her neck and crawled up her legs, sneaking itself into this every places she did her best to cover. She fidgeted with the keys, eager for the warmth of her house.

If They Had All Practiced
​BY JEFFREY PENDO

“And what does the power of hope mean to you?”
Cassie looked around. The porte cochère reached off the side of the Wrigley mansion

One Model of Independence
​BY AJ DYKENS-HODAPP

My mouth was pried open. Like I was in a perpetual state of disbelief. Somehow they had tricked me into allowing all this. A big round flood light was directed at my face, which must’ve looked pathetically frightened and in pain.

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FALL 2020​

​Wildflowers
​BY PATRICK LEWIS

There was only my breath—labored, but steady and strong. The clean air stung my bleeding knees. I pushed brambly curtains aside. The thicket pricked at my skin. The sky was unspeakably blue.

​Shrinking House
BY SARA HEWITT

No space to breathe, no space to get clean. The closet, too. Just push aside the boxes of gloves and soap and you can see.

In Earth's Diurnal Course, Rolling Round
BY LEAH RIVERA

It wasn’t cinematic. It was all gloom, no doom, slow and constant. It snuck up her like the bag of kale she bought on a whim, rotting in the back of the fridge behind a tub of premade potato salad and some miracle whip.

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SPRING 2020​

Bodies
BY TESS GIBBS

Is it worth searching for if
I will never pin it down like skin, bottle it like blood, hold it like intestines through my fingers, stack it like
brittle bones?
​

The Road to Cheyenne
BY LUCAS CUNNINGHAM

Sammy watched them go. He wasn’t sure if he hoped they’d make it to Del Rio or died before they got there. The road was just as lonely going south.

13 advil: Virginia Woolf pastiche
BY JULIENNE HO

The day is strained, with pinched expressions scattered throughout the library accompanied by tense whispers wafting through couples on ruby-red cushions.

Convergence
BY OLIVIA MEEHAN

​She likes to pretend. But she’s not really pretending, she is embodying; pushing out different sides of herself. It gets her high.

secret garden.
BY KAYLA LEE

your mind was gone, it had disappeared, you did not remember our secret garden, you did not remember me, when you held my hands silently, surrounded by wires, cords, and a metal jungle, you asked me who I was.

Morning Bike Ride
BY ELLA GARDNER

I knew something horrendous was going to happen if I didn’t stop it. I won’t tell you how I knew, because you wouldn’t get it, but that fact was as real to me as you are, sitting in front of me now.

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FALL 2019​

Notes on Hollywood
BY HARRISON PYROS

Actually, it doesn’t look like anyone. I can only tell it’s a woman and that she’s either surprised or orgasming.

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SPRING 2019

There Is No Other
BY SELENA SPIER

In the convex glass of her mother's corneas, she could see another little girl, a little girl with big eyes and a big nose and a big round head on top of that tiny little body. When she smiled, a trickle of drool seeped out from the corner of her mouth.

sally and the drugs
BY CAMERON TIPTON

Sally ​was c​ocaine. And she hadn’t the slightest objection to this fact.

Anxiety, the Girl
BY ZACH MILLER

 Some of them scrunched their faces in disgust or disbelief, others nodded as if they understood, but they were nodding too fast so it was clear that they were nodding as if they understood, not because they understood.

Routine
BY COLIN ADAMS​

​There was also a strange feeling holding someone’s heart in your hand. After the first time she had done this, Kim became
hooked.

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FALL 2018

The Improvisers
BY JEFF FRIEDMAN

I knew if I had a way to make people laugh, I could quit my time- and money-wasting therapy.

The Sound of a Miracle
BY SAM RESNICK

Rachel Rosencrantz, daughter of Sarah Rosencrantz, champion challah braider, and Ruben Rosencrantz, esteemed rabbi, learned one irrefutable fact about herself two hours into her Bat Mitzvah: She was a bad Jew.

The Eye Fairy
BY TOMMY SCHNEIDER

Everything reminded Kat of her loose eyes. Grapes— 
eyes. Subtraction— 
eyes. Ms. Witherstone’s face— 
eyes. Kat sat on her fingers every chance she could, terrified that if she lifted the pressure even for a second her own hands would somehow dig into her skill and out would pop her eye.