Summerland
This was the dregs between July and August and the air was stilled and the bay lay flat like a shining sheet fitted tight to the coast. Hours slipped…
Professionals
Swig Sanchez bombs hard down Main Street Hill for what may be the last time on a weekend, so hungry is he for skatepark carnage and the company of…
Exit Strategies of a Great Squirrel Army
The squirrels at Pasquali’s Garden Center are building an army. Andre first notices as he waters the shrubs before the store opens and their abyss-black eyes watch from behind…
Dreams of Crows
Often, an image from fifteen years ago came into his mind—a murder of crows pinwheeling through a narrow slot canyon, red sandstone rising overhead, thin strip of sky, a…
Hitting Standstill Traffic Not Long After Quickly Embarking Upon an Unanticipated Road Trip to Attend My Estranged Father’s Funeral Two Time Zones Away
My father once told me on a camping trip: You don’t need the courts. You need me, he said. No moon, no stars up through the thin canopy, only…
Disambiguation: a Chapbook by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn
Salamander presents Disambiguation, a chapbook by Jen Jabaily-Blackburn. Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the 2024 Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award winner. Generously funded by Suffolk University’s Ellen LaForge Memorial Poetry Fund,…
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…