The Birth
She paced restlessly around her study, a hand to the small of her back. Why wouldn’t it come? It felt like she’d been carrying this child forever. Well, when you counted all the years she’d dreamed, imagined,...
Fiction / Print pp. 2–3Texts / Written Works
Written Index
Poetry, fiction, essays, criticism, and hybrid works arranged as an archival reading table.
3 Haikus
1.even the rose’s foundation is rooted on a stem of thorns
Poetry / Print pp. 7–8Chrysalis
Patty pushes open the shop door and we see, in the short time we’ve been inside, that the moths have invaded the town, their fragile bodies flitting past the moon, parking lot littered with white wings. They...
Fiction / Print pp. 12–13That Night, the Moon Forgot My Name
When I was small, my voice carried like a bright thing— a child’s easy spark, quick to leap from my tongue into anyone’s waiting hands. Nothing in me knew how to hush. But then there was that night— the one...
Poetry / Print p. 18The Ransom Note
The true story of a busy library, a jigsaw puzzle, a severed ear and a missing dog.
Nonfiction / Print pp. 23–24Avocados
What strikes me now is not that this no longer exists but that it ever existed at all. That place you rented in Old Hollywood, small backyard dense with foliage, avocados like heavy bells in the cathedral of a...
Poetry / Print p. 27In Medias Res
Mabel parks behind a long line of vehicles on the road’s shoulder, grabs her camera from the passenger seat, and starts walking towards Peter’s house. Only a mile out of town, yet rural, she can hear chickens...
Fiction / Print pp. 30–32Invasive Species
Kansas’ climate is not like Pluto’s, nor Jupiter’s. The summer air is hot and thick and wet, it coats the corn fields in purple sweat, cries beneath a red-eye sun. Then winter comes enthusiastically and...
Poetry / Print p. 34Loitering/a life in cigarettes
Tarrytons were sweet, Lucky strikes; harsh, Pall Malls; edgy. Hank blew perfect rings, popped them with an angry finger. Sam shot pool with a Winston shoved in his missing tooth. Tidy package: hard pack, soft...
Poetry / Print pp. 38–40Ode on a Green Banana
(After John Keats) I Thou still untasted child of tropic lands, Thou greenish morsel waiting to be found Among the broad-leaves shadows deep and cool, With all thy sisters hanging upside-down. What subtle...
Poetry / Print pp. 42–43Greenhorn
Clay Hurtubise, R.Ph.
Nonfiction / Print pp. 48–49Interrogated by a Bot
My AI-based job interview left me deeply disturbed. I was the last kid on our cul-de-sac to stop using a Montgomery Ward 8-track tape player when cassette players gained traction in the early ’70s. I kept my...
Nonfiction / Print pp. 52–58What’s Left of My Father
I cut a circle from the chest
Poetry / Print p. 63Brothers
Dan stopped sleepwalking when he enlisted in the Army. He half joked that God tied his legs to the bed at night so he wouldn't get himself killed.
Poetry / Print pp. 65–66To Rid Himself of the Evidence, the Criminal Tossed the Weapon into the Garden
Snail finds a pickaxe plots of chaos in its shell slow revenge begins
Poetry / Print p. 67Basil
Basil grows at the hands of those who bother to tend, and leans wild when they don’t.
Poetry / Print p. 67Desert Sands (excerpt)
Transparent thoughts in the poolside eclipse that’s hard you see. When there’s a language – but no one to speak it too Nahuatlacah/Purepecha huchari uri picua – por nuestra Fuerza. Carry over sight how...
Hybrid / Print pp. 68–72The Passing/ The Memorial
San Francisco 11/23/25
Nonfiction / Print pp. 76–82To those who chose to keep their shoes dry
there was beauty in my storms but it was overshadowed by my angry crashing thunder calling out the injustices by name and brilliant flashes of lightning illuminating all our secrets some only saw the mess my...
Poetry / Print p. 85My Grandmother’s Empty House
Her bedroom door nailed shut Just like mine
Poetry / Print pp. 86–87Flow State
As I type this, my children and I are currently in one. That’s not the technical term, so allow me to elucidate:
Nonfiction / Print pp. 88–90Bringing Stillness to Life
I was on my therapist's couch being treated for an acute PTSD episode after accidentally backing over my new,12-week-old Saint Bernard puppy, Ziggy. I had thought Ziggy was on the porch, but he was under my...
Nonfiction / Print pp. 93–96White Knuckled
I rip grass from the earth as if something within me will finally loosen with it The blades snap wet against my calloused palms cold, fragile things breaking because I need something to break
Poetry / Print p. 106Hispana
1. A Hispanic woman is built from stories. 2. Built from stories that everyone talked about at the dinner table. 3. Learns what love and family are early. 4. Comfort means something is cooking in ma’s kitchen....
Poetry / Print p. 109Upheaval
Out of nowhere ground rumbled shook wildly
Poetry / Print pp. 112–113Sleep No More
Sleep No More is performed three times a night, through dance, without words.
Poetry / Print pp. 114–115Stretching South
We lost track. Losing count We were sixteen. After dark anywhere Such light Mud patch Star nights. I don’t Remember. Fridays often. Mostly Saturdays Orange Julius when you got off. Just to see your mouth! Was...
Poetry / Print p. 119Christmas Day – El Toro, California
It’s pretty quiet today, one skateboarder clomping over the cement of the basketball court, a few guys sitting on a bench. Louie drives by in the golf cart, little ponytail pulled back, red tinsel taped to the...
Poetry / Print pp. 124–125Icarus
Icarus is a blue supergiant that was discovered in 2018 and is the most distant individual star ever detected.
Poetry / Print p. 127