He twisted slowly as if he’d been smacked in the face, and his eyes rolled into his head. Then he fell flat and hard, like a thousand-year-old pine in the forest, crunching on the forest floor. He was motionless and awkwardly positioned, like a hit and run victim, and soon his face turned white then […]
Read moreI Said I’d Make You Breakfast | Natalie Strickland
I knew you were hiding behind the shelf silent and bare-ass naked but I had important things to do like say I’d make you breakfast, but I forgot, because I saw the paint on the counter asking to spread itself on blank pages that I opened and shut, and opened and shut, til it looked […]
Read moreDestinations | Diane Payne
Standing in the long line, burdened by suspicious border patrol agents and a heavy backpack, I see Bob’s blue truck. It looks the same as it did the day he left Michigan for Oregon, a place he believed to be hipper, more appreciative of guitar builders. Bob’s old truck idled in the vehicle lane, packed […]
Read moreFour-Handed Dentistry | Eva Langston
Andrea Chang can’t sleep. Her wrists hurt. It’s a throbbing ache, deep inside her bones, that reminds her of growing pains from her adolescence. But it isn’t so much the pain that keeps her awake as it is the worry. The last time her wrists hurt like this, the doctor told her it was the […]
Read moreRow Your Boat Ever After | Ariel Carter-Rodriguez
Stephen Stevens had been deathisized, or desensitized to death, at an early age. It had begun when he discovered Stuart Stevens, his older brother, playing God in the attic. Not only would he pluck each leg off the small house spiders that coexisted with the Christmas decorations, he would slingshot squirrels, birds—and even the occasional […]
Read moreIntro to Lesbianism | Rachel Charlene Lewis
I’m sitting here eating what’s left of your cheese puffs and telling Derek the story of my life with you. As soon as he walks into our apartment, I say, “Lily left.” He says, “Oh fuck.” He looks around the apartment as if to see if you’re really gone. It doesn’t look like it. Your […]
Read moreEli’s Boys | Zach Nabors
Only three hours prior had Hopper been engulfed in a surrealistic frenzy, a haze of anxiety and shouting, when he and Finn had hit a hard right directly after the Sparky the Squirrel sign, an oversized, gray, bucktoothed squirrel denoting his distaste for forest fires, disrespect for nature, and beer cans being lobbed into his […]
Read more2 poems | Drew Pisarra
Despair A man who looked just like me, whispered (in my ear) something low and unexpectedly porno- graphic –- a crude come-on that basically meant, I should fuck myself, letting one of the me’s be he. Kindly I declined. Still, my alter ego persisted with one obscene suggestion after another. Initially, I pretended I had […]
Read more2 poems | Glen Armstrong
Floating in an Above Ground Pool While the Last Pill of Summer Goes About Its Business of Filling my Head with a Gentle Fuckery that Could Be Described, in the Broadest Sense of the Word, as “Anachronistic” The pill dissolved inside me. Then I dissolved in the swimming pool on a sunny suburban afternoon. Soon, […]
Read more2 poems | Jesse Back
Sex Is sex is the great affirmation more than anything else it tells us we’re alive heart pumping blood to the dick that throbs in anticipation. sex is our only goal in life to make another live so when we do it our purpose is fulfilled bodies pumping sweat heat spilling from our naked selves […]
Read moreMammywood | Gloria Holwerda-Williams
As it goes, even J-Lo was maid up to remain the same Driving Miss Lazy just sticks to The same crazy creed racist fantasy greed Everyone else is maid to serve their old rule colonial need In just one movie Latifah, Alicia, and two more mammywood made all 4 one white child played the past […]
Read moreThe Frost Came Early | Scott Burr
The frost came early, and all of the flowers died. The gardeners were out in the morning, and you could hear them cursing in Spanish. Nobody thought that the frost would come and so no one bothered to cover the flowers. By eleven o’clock it was warm again, and you could stand on your balcony […]
Read moreClarity | Dana Yost
Christ, this is good. Twelve hours of a clear head, no slog, no drag or the gauze-curtain of fatigue. Just a little ache under each eye, in that baggy flesh that turns dark upon deep tire. But that has only come late. Before that, a spree of writing, reading, and finding music videos on the […]
Read moreGirls’ Night Out | Nina Bennett
Friday is our night. Because I talk with my hands, broad exclamation points, the bartender flags me when I knock over my drink, first of the evening. Because she watches you get in the driver’s seat, she is back behind the bar when you tap a Mercedes as you pull out of the parking lot. […]
Read more2 poems | Zach Nabors
Manic Young Writer And The Misadventures of His Alter Ego: Laughing Boy I have a voice goddamnit! No matter What your robotic rejection email says. “We wish you luck publishing elsewhere.” They ALL say. Thank God for all the Lit-Mag wishes. Where would I be without them??? I got style mothafuckas. The substance is somewhere— […]
Read moreAvian Flu | Lilly Barels
I want granite instead of bones for ribs. I want cold stone to remind my heart that it has a bad habit of bumping up against flesh. I want to stop the sparks. I do not want a crow to live imprisoned in the granite cage. I would prefer he not wear his velvety black […]
Read moreWhat I feel about Jack Kerouac | Denise Mostacci Sklar
I feel his, Oh Boy baby innocence ( IN- no- sense world) pure blue-eyes warm pouring sadness in cold winter hiding—boy jumps snow bank Abandoned, Joy-self destroying…4-ever jumping The frozen flake, iron Triumph caught in flash of billboard sky avec tout le monde–fiery moment HOT alone in simple AHH!-mazement of scribbled truth —– Denise Mostacci […]
Read more2 poems | Walter Beck
Reflection in a Steam-Covered Mirror at Lorenzo’s Apartment It’s no longer the face Of a freewheeling kid on a wild weekend; It’s the face of a young man Growing too heavy around the eyes, Running and burning out Before his time. When Did the Rose-Colored Glasses Come Off? My brother asked me one night, Over […]
Read moreYellow and red | V Marin
and yellow and red. The spectacle is yellow, the evening is red. Red cumulus spread about the tent. Ceiling is the unknown. Round is infinite. Flag is subtle. 1 never returns. They arise within. Center is blindness, girth A circumference. They dangle the tent’s top with dusty wavelets of laughs. Swirling up, twirling, self- hypnotizing, […]
Read more2 poems | Connolly Ryan
Resentment is the New Champagne “Every time a friend succeeds. I die a little.”—Gore Vidal Drink up now, there’s plenty for everyone. That dude smirking in his kayak, eye-rolling prior to Eskimo-rolling: you’ve got it in for him, whether you know it or like it or not. Where does he get off? Or that lady […]
Read more2 poems | Meeah Williams
The Month of Dead Sparrows April is the month of dead sparrows in my pillow case in the vegetable crisper stuffed in the mailbox with the junk mail I find them everywhere I am in a movie starring dead sparrows I am married to a dead sparrow all my children are sparrows dead in the […]
Read more2 poems | Paul Alzate-Moreno
The Calculator So careful, full of measure, You weigh me against myself. My good faces off Against the darkness, And I want my champion, The white knight to win. My heart sighs, Which sways your scales. Your math exercise: Perhaps you do it From fear of calamity. Or you serve some goal Beyond what I […]
Read more2 poems | J.P. Herrera
open mic it was a day I went out on and there was this sad, stupid white woman and she said she was a poet and told us to go to her workshop because she was a poet and then she read some poetry about a whale but it wasn’t that good so she told […]
Read moreTreasure Chest | Emily Wierzbowski
I started collecting secrets when I was just six years old. Like most collections, mine gathered dust in forgotten places and yellowed on old pages. When the sickness set in, like other people who realize that they are dying, these misplaced pieces of my past gained a newfound importance. Once you can fix a percentage […]
Read moreThe Things I Think About While Giving Head | Meeah Williams
The overworked air conditioner blocks out the sound of traffic from the nearby highway, the new house going up next door, and whatever else is going on in the world. What time is it, anyway? Nearly ten. I’m so sluggish all I want to do is close my eyes and go back to sleep in […]
Read moreTelephone Operator Romance | Zachary Lussier
It was not originally apparent to the girl how much he loved the telephone. She should have been skeptical when he insisted the telephone come to bed with them the first time he made love to her. Now, thinking back on it, he was probably on the telephone the whole time in his mind. Putting […]
Read moreSomething Like Freedom | Joe Marchia
The day I graduated from college, I stood for a long time in the bathroom. I studied the mirror for signs of adulthood, as I had not done since I started puberty. I checked to see, if in some way, the event had left any physical markers. Maybe I had developed a wrinkle, or my […]
Read more2 Pieces | Kirby Wright
Reunion with a Friend Lost for 38 Years Meet me at the pub’s fire pit. I have a wife and you do too. I consider this a test. Who picks up the tab?
Read more
VAGABOND CITY 