This issue features new work by Micheal Martone, author of Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler's List, Four for a Quarter, and many other books.  

Andrew Bourelle, Xerxes
Brian DiNuzzo, The Censor
John Haggerty, Big Bitch Material
Kevin Tosca, When We All Grow Up

Jacqueline Doyle, Meta-Fictional Pasta
George Korolog, An Observation at the 
   Conjunction of Black Holes and Crickets

Caylin Capra-Thomas, I Could Tell You Again
Kevin Carollo, Purr
William Cordeiro, Wrack Lines
Mark DeCarteret, Birdwatching for Beginners
Kent Leatham, Air
Ross Losapio, I Knew
Nadra Mabrouk, Virgin
Jonathan McClure, Photograph
Ellen Birkett Morris, Last Words 
Martin Ott, Goodnight
Derek Palacio, Elegy for the Stem
Esteban Rodriguez, Goldfish
Kate Rosenberg, All Night Architecture
Kirk Schlueter, 14 Ways of Watching Randy 
   Johnson Kill a Dove With a Fastball

   and many others...

For Tanzanite
William Snyder

We see boys and men waiting for shifts— 
squatting, lying on the dry ground, standing.
No shade but the mine shaft roof and a strip 
beneath the diesel huffing air
down a thin, gray hose. Three-hundred meters, 
they tell us, and out in every direction—tunnels 
meeting tunnels, over and under—the mine's 
deep snarl. Thirty-seven miners, they say, 
crushed last month, crushed deep
in child-sized shafts—the buckle
of bamboo pole, the snap of
sapling strut, the crush of slack, red earth. 
                                                                                       Read More >>

An Observation At The Conjunction Of Black Holes and Crickets
George Korolog

Now, this observation is being hung directly in front of your face, like a dare, suspended like plump, ripe mulberries gripping the secret stems of the sky, even though the heavens have long forgotten this pitiless clinging and have methodically moved on to choose more exotic objects, new textures of interest, new things moving and brimming, right now, from the mysterious boundary of the very first light all the way back to the top of the troposphere. 
                                                                                       Read More >>

M O M
Michael Martone

In 1925, flying over North Highlands, with his mother, Ida, on board, Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, negotiated a crash landing after the motor driving his DeHaviland choked.  
                                                                                       Read More >>

The Censor
Brian DiNuzzo

      My eyes hurt some when I rub them, and when I close my eyes I see my computer screen. It is a good night for a drink but all we have is wine and the feeling fades. The question Why haven’t I married Catherine? is always hanging around, the way that censoring hangs around as the only job I’ll ever have. 
       Catherine’s neck muscles are tight and my hands disappear under her constrictor curls. Clapton fades out. Catherine sinks back, rests her head against my chest. From this angle, her nose is pointed like a capital A turned on its side, and her eyes are vats of fresh oil. Is this what Catherine looked like when she was young?
      When she looks up at me, I flinch. From her angle, she must be seeing an older me—my chin doubled, my teeth crooked, my nostrils like industrial vacuums. 
      Catherine shoots up, wincing. “Ouch. You hurt.” She moves her hair to soothe her inflamed neck. “It felt good for a while, then it just hurt.” She is turning and twisting and nodding her head, making sure I haven’t damaged her. I apologize and think, This is why I haven’t married you.