Poetry
Nerve
sometimes so angry at My Life
packing to leave town that the nerve
down my center so long
tuned to this one diagnosis aka My Life
which will soon turn inside out shuck me
ride on a train and leave the old skin
on the platform or in a stinking multisex
restroom or with the meter expired
so I pay the fare and go
home the mind grows numb
and blackens how long will
it take to grow back
from one severed limb of star-
matter if that is anything can
By Nancy White
Nonfiction
She's too innocent for me, he tells his friends at school, before he comes over and spends entire afternoons in my bedroom. I can see the nerves in his eyes when he puts his hand up my shirt, one time, abruptly, with so much tenderness and care that it tickles and I laugh. He never tries it again. I know the truth: I'm not the one who isn't ready. Every day I wait.
From "The Mariana Trench" by Alaina Scarano
Fiction
You look at the picture on the screen and it’s David. He’s smiling the same smile from
yesterday and his eyelashes are just as long as they were yesterday and you still find his nose big and endearing. They’re already talking about possible motives, tossing the words terrorist, radical, monster, around from correspondent to correspondent. You see David sitting across from you saying he doesn’t like coffee. No matter how hard you try, you can’t apply those words to the guy you met yesterday.
From "You Don't Have to Be Good to Be Nice" by Kameron Ray Morton
Art
Cover art: "this is how you become everything that exists" by Christina Rosche
