A Dream of Earth in Summer

by Jenn Dean

If April and May felt hesitant and pale like an egg, with June comes the hatching of summer. Summer looks like the earth’s Bacchanalian dreaming: bees cluster, drunk on the pendulous and phallic spears of flowers, orgiastic birds couple, beetles crawl and heave, and snakes unroll from the marsh grass like rolls of striped tape. The trees pump themselves so full of water their trunks swell and water shoots up the inner bark’s xylem with enough force that you can hear it with a stethoscope. This is the tipping point, the point of no return: summer can no longer be stuffed back into the bag it came in. Continue reading

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Autotomist

by M. Cynthia Cheung

If, like salamanders, we were born
with fault lines built in,
tucked deep
between planes of flesh,
the day-to-day might
be easier. No need
to defend, or even explain. Continue reading

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The Blue Planet

by Mark Brazaitis

The first trouble was the boy.

Mike Little said he was lonely. He missed his parents and his brother. He missed his bedroom. He missed the café at the corner of the two busy streets where he used to meet his girlfriend after school. This was, of course, before she broke up with him. He was with us because she’d broken up with him, he confessed. He wanted to show her he didn’t need her—he wanted to show her he didn’t need her or the entire earth. Continue reading

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Latency

by Janet Yoder

Early in the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, two of my cousins and I did a Zoom ukulele session. Before the pandemic, we had planned a cousin reunion in McPherson, Kansas. A wheat farm near McPherson is where my cousins grew up, where their mom and my dad grew up, where my Grandpa Yoder farmed, where his father farmed, where one cousin and her husband still farm. We had planned the trip months ago. My Aunt Mary Ellen is 88 years old and lives in the skilled nursing section of her retirement home there. She is the family historian, storyteller, and one of its musicians. So, my sister Gail and our three cousins planned the reunion. We all anticipated our time together, especially Aunt Mary Ellen. But the coronavirus arrived and we had to settle for our Zoom ukulele session. That’s how I learned about audio latency. Continue reading

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My Mother’s Middle-School Yearbook

by Alex Manuel

Some names were highlighted
in a faded yellow marker, and I don’t understand why.
The first few were boys. Initially I thought
they might’ve been her school-yard crushes,
but I doubt my mom had a crush
on her chubby English teacher. In his photo, he wore
glasses that made his ears bulge out.
A jokester chicken-scratched
Dumbo by his name. Continue reading

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