Poetry
Hunger
now is the winter
after the war. we dissent
with the sunrise, wreck
our hands in frozen furrows,
weigh the taste of dirt-crowned ginger
against the hollow
sounds that surface, sprout like weeds
from within our throats.
By Kimberly Glanzman
Nonfiction
On good days, at bedtime, my son asks his dad and me to name famous people with dyslexia or dyscalculia or ADHD. On bad days, he asks, “Why did God make me this way?” Most parents I know are fending off monsters, high-fructose corn syrup, screen time. My husband and I must fend off an existential crisis.
From "My Son" by Elizabeth Vondrak
Fiction
Sun spanned the sky but not one buyer approached him. The Assembly had decreed that goats are god’s own creatures. If a goat was found to have been killed, the butcher was to be stoned to death at the village square; so it serves as an ultimate deterrent to anyone who intended to consume the meat. Death to the killer of goats, the government had proclaimed, adding, activists who say that peasants are dying because nobody is willing to buy their livestock for fear of the State are animals, and they’d be the ones who’d be sent to the gallows.
From "Gods, Goats, Guns" by Mandira Pattnaik
Art
Cover art: "Forest Magic" by Christine Connerly
