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Issue 28

July 2025

My son keeps telling me he's seen lightning bugs (or fireflies), but I haven't seen a single one this year. I've even heard others talk about how they're seeing more this summer than in years past. I'm starting to take it personally. Maybe word got around about my childhood propensity for homemade nightlights. Someone brought up how lightning bugs have a smell, and I'd completely forgotten that until they mentioned it in relation to a jar of the bugs. My brain immediately supplied a ghost of tha

Editor: Aubrey Green

  1. Dead Poets Society
    by Kwanele Buthelezi

    Dead Poets Society ? No . I don’t mean that we are an army of dead poets , I just mean that maybe John Keating was right when he said poetry is what we stay alive for because tell me why only poets can understand the story of Medusa even though they were never victims of her wrath . I think that poetry is hope when there is barely any . I think that poetry is believing that you will make it through the next day with your heart drumming against your ribcage , while trying to stay afloat because y
    dead-poets-society

  2. no reason to kill the horse
    by Brian Mosher

    He was working over in Mansfield,  and his wife was home alone  when one of the cows got sick, or choked on an apple or something. She hitched the old horse to the wagon,  drove over to where her husband was, full speed.  By the time she arrived, the poor old horse was sweaty and breathless. She told him,  ‘The cow is in trouble,’ and he said, ‘Well, that’s no reason to kill the horse.’
    no-reason-to-kill-the-horse

  3. Banana Slug
    by Christine Irving

    I do not  aspire to inspire— beauty excuse enough  for any slug – no more required than to beam bright as a sun-ray.  Look  how I glisten, how I gleam among shadows cast by giants. Observe  my stately progress, allowing  admirers a chance to gaze  upon me, wonder-lost.  
    banana-slug

  4. Mona Lisa
    by Julie Peterson Freeman

    Nat King Cole is singing Mona Lisa on the 33-rpm record spinning on the portable record player the day I walk into Gim Loong Chow Mein at 4948 France Ave. South in Edina, Minnesota.  Wearing a yellow poplin Doris Day shirtwaist with a full pleated skirt, I am fourteen years-old and applying for my first job.  The Chinese takeout restaurant has a large rectangular shaped kitchen with a walk-in cooler and long industrial stove top that houses three prodigious woks for orders cooked from scratch.  
    mona-lisa

  5. Paper Doll Summer
    by Elaine Alarcon

    Through the screen doors at either end of the shotgun house, cool and sweet, a breeze creates a wind tunnel smelling of rain. In the sultry summer hours June Allyson, Liz Taylor, and Jane Powell flutter in the shifting currents of wind - paper dolls pinioned to the screen door by little hands, but not for long. Light quickens to a lurid scowl over the horizon and the hot suffocating wind catches and stills, breathless, awaiting the twister. No birds sing in this caesura. Footsteps hurry to th
    paper-doll-summer