Full digital issue is below. Purchase print copy on our Blurb page .
Volume 3, Issue 1
Editor's Note
I recently got back from hiking a forty-mile section of Vermont’s Long Trail. It was the furthest I’ve ever hiked. At the end of the second day, I discovered blisters the size of grapes on each of my heels. I poked them with our spam-cutting knife, and out came jets of fluid. Very udder-like. Very gross. Don’t pop your blisters. They will heal slower, and you may be ostracized for having weepy feet.
We (my brother, three friends, and me) woke up at four AM on the first day, stumbled out of our motel, and into the trees illuminating the wet-leaf-trail with headlamps. It began to drizzle. We’d known the forecast but refused to cancel through sheer pride. Everyone pulled up their rainhoods and arched their backs willing the wetness to subside. I opened an umbrella. The others tried to tease me but quickly became jealous. Hikers don’t bring umbrellas because that would be absurd. I remained dry and aloof the entire weekend.
Hiking dissolves my anxiety. Maybe it’s the exhaustion from constant exercise, the lack of apps and texts, the simple goals (walk, eat, sleep, walk again), or the shared sense of wanting to be at the campsite already, so why don’t we chat about something idiotic to pass the time, hey isn’t wet moss better than toilet paper? Shouldn’t Massachusetts invade Rhode Island and turn it into a county? I sure hope we don’t get stuck sleeping next to a bunch of 30-something Brooklynite hikers, all cheerful and millennial. Something about the trudge filled me with bliss. I felt peaceful.
While I was walking in the woods, I was neglecting my editor duties. This was supposed to be the first issue that came out on time, right at the beginning of October like all good semi-annual literary journals do. Whoops. My best excuse is the record-breaking number of submissions I received, more importantly, the record-breaking number of submissions I loved. This is the biggest issue by far, and there were still some stories I wish I hadn’t cut.
As always, thank you to the authors who built this issue, and thank you to the readers who read it!
— J.B. Marlow, Editor
Cover Artist (Portrait of March)
Table of Contents
Rag Doll Symposium
A sensation. Somewhere in the darkness. Soft. Warm. Spreading. Familiar. Sweetly familiar...
Cut Through Everything
She is standing on the side of the highway slicing into an apple when the horn blast from a passing eighteen-wheeler makes her jump...
Past Life
Before my mother, there had been another woman, Britannia, whom my father had loved and married when they were both in their twenties...
Near Flood
The driveway had washed away again, leaving one treacherous path of mud alongside a sluice of running water...
The Rascals
I lived in a loft overlooking Boston through a wall of glass. I won’t tell you where. Don’t find me...
Portrait
We are in Provincetown for the summer so Dad can write his novel. Mom isn’t around, because she has to stay back and work...
The Distant Light of Interstellar Objects
Here she comes, still catching her breath, shaking the rain from her wheat-colored hair...
The Only Way Out Is Through the Window
I am in a room with a door that does not open. I have been here a long time...
Burnt Offerings
The Worcester, Massachusetts of the 1950s seems so far away, but my mind returns me to that time and place...
So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star
Charlie Dibenidetto had made it big. That’s what we’d say in the days before any of us ever gave anything a real try, except for Charlie...