Online Exclusive: Review of Buffalo Girl by Jessica Q. Stark
Encased in Mythos: Buffalo Girl by Jessica Q. Stark (BOA Editions, 2023) Jessica Q. Stark’s Buffalo Girl is a stunning follow-up to her 2020 debut Savage Pageant. Markedly more…
Self-portrait in a Heat Wave
As if the underworld were breaking through, lake beds from Uzbekistan to California emerge relinquishing their litter— suicides, the murdered, the accident- prone who one time slipped beneath the…
What We Learn
The soft pink lining of my cheeks, the ridges along the roof of my mouth, the recesses of my throat: the year before I turned thirty, they all betrayed…
Let Us Consider Drunken Women
The best guess, says the seed package, is that the name for this fabulous lettuce, Drunken Women, derives from her frizzy-headed look—emerald leaves tipped in dark claret red. A…
Animal Mouths
It was a surprise, really, that we both wanted them—the twin ceramic dogs that live on top of the china cabinet. Will and I have inherited many things between…
The Last Voyage of Captain Black
His ship was the pride of the Liverpool yards; her sails, taut in the favorable trades; her belly, stuffed with African rosewood fit to win the favor of the…
Sudden Bigger Lady
She tells herself dickhead’s gotta go because she is everything she is and more without his dirt hands sweat stink licorice breath hot like fire Come ere baby you…
Cottonmouth
In the beginning is the fish stink, a padlock pinched through a doorlatch eye. When I’m eight years old, my mother lifts the hem of her nightshirt to show…
Clara Schumann Washing Dishes
Sometimes I think of all the people I’ll never know. Even now someone is kneeling. Not worship, but praying for a line to follow. My life is full. Seven…
Salamander Fiction Contest 2024 Results
Winner "Exit Strategies of a Great Squirrel Army" by Michael Welch From judge Kevin Wilson: What begins as a wonderful examination of the dynamics of work, the main character Andre…
Optimize Optical
A sting. A swell. A white light. “Easy,” Dr. Gray says, patting my arm. “Let them adjust.” Warm tears bury their bodies in the pits of my ears. White…