Fall was always my favorite; Halloween, foliage, pumpkins. The crisp cool air that causes goose bumps, but doesn’t yet make you shiver. The season brings people together despite the end of warmth and sun tans. Decor begins to line streets and people stock up on treats. Autumn is home. Home to my joy; Home to my inspiration; Home to my fondest memories. Amongst those memories is you: Your blue jeans and freshly shined brown boots, Your lit cigarette and your wide smile, Your fluffy brown hair and bright eyes. But just like the season, you came and went. And just like the leaves, I fell. Sophia ..read more

I I was around five shots of local rum into the evening when I spotted her. Gracefully, shamelessly, regretfully her. Scrolling between decorated faces, high expectations, and unruly comparisons, I used the new social media to search for a friend amongst foes. Instead, there was only her. The lights, something trendy and cheap, illuminated her face in tacky lilac. The photo had blurred at the edges but was clear enough to see that long blonde hair and charismatic grin. Everything had been going so well. I’d made my peace with childhood memories. I’d gotten better at answering the invasive ques ..read more

i’ve got a jam that’ll make you go tappin’ clappin’ whistlin’ stars and sunsets-- a sticky song a nightingale envies a refrain ringin’ with gardenias and birthstones growin’ beats beats beats the heart is alive after tightness and strain and it won’t refrain from lovin’ and feelin’-- smooth my melody’s got no edges no nicks or tricks it rose from ripened fruit an indisposed ray some inherited spoils-- reconstructed nothin’ in my song is wasteD some say not intricatE, that it’s missing a labyrinth they don’t know my tunE how it came from the gut the grit in my Palms the jagged silhouette of hun ..read more

The day dissolves in my mouth like cotton candy finding it’s peaceful end Hesitant to believe that this never ending day would actually conclude Trapped in a permanent wet tongue Down slimy throat, intestinal shame A life of toilet and drains and shit water!? When it had once been so light, so airy, so sugary sweet. And so pretty. Once so cheap and disease-less Warless and free. Janelle Finamore is a musician, poet, and teacher located in Orange County, CA. Most recently, her work appeared in Sad Girls Lit, Poet Magazine, Humans of the World, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Arlijo, Academy of the Hea ..read more

Growing up, and by that I mean my emo-middle school era, I was obsessed with the “forbidden.” It really wasn’t that scandalous, it just felt edgy. I watched movies about dead lovers and their flowery girlfriends. The closest thing to that, which I could experience as a thirteen-year-old was reading the vampir-istic love stories written by other young girls wanting the same thing. As all middle school girls knew, the majority of vampires lived in Potomac County, all around DC. I imagined ways I could meet these guys, the easiest I saw back then was to go to college near them. Vampires sort of f ..read more

Cooper River Park, Cherry Hill, NJ for my mother I was standing with the river rats, everyone saying what state of marriage or divorce they were in, and I said I was divorced. When it was his turn he said I’ve never been married and we all had a good chuckle. I left a few notes on his windshield with my phone number. He never called. I found out his last name; he was two years older than me and living at home with his parents. So I called him there, spoke to his mother, who thought it was a good idea we go out on a date. We saw Annie Hall, which I had seen with another man the week before. Nex ..read more

I don’t think I have a motherland, just a strange monster in my imagination, stitched together with a Frankeinsteinian arrogance to canonize the resulting composite as ‘motherland.’ So, I think it weighs the same as a chopped-up half of soy sauce chicken in my mother’s hand from the hot deli after exhausting every aisle of their contents as well as herself too much to cook that night, and in the other, a plastic bag of VHS tapes volumes 3 through 8 of 46, some Chinese cultivation fantasy dubbed over in formal Vietnamese, a stiff language we will not hear on the streets once we step outside thi ..read more

1. We all share the same reason for being here. The chairs are arranged in a circle. The doctor seats herself in one of them. The plastic creaks under her slight frame. One girl swirls her coffee and takes a sip. I watch her lipstick imprint itself on the lid. If no one speaks, we won’t have to acknowledge what we know. If we stay silent, our stories don’t exist. 2. He flicks his tail and takes two more steps along the dusty ridge. The earth, a tinderbox below his feet, cracking until he stops in his tracks. Alarm brachycardia in us both. I swat the flies away while he stands still, while his ..read more

After Mary Ellen Mark At the Alano Club, a child of seven, I remember my mother sharing with a group of strangers and family that the great thing about memory is that it exists outside of time – no beginning, no end – and that this was the kind of miracle she loved to chase, to exist and not exist on that thin line of oblivion. You can trace the paths she’d take to discover and rediscover this liminal space; prayers far from her chapped lips; her Kadesh tongue, dry and cracked and bleeding; her solferino arm hidden beneath bandages, a veiled playground for the clumsy; her eyes – a beautifully ..read more

In front of my living room window, on a splendid May afternoon, warm and sunny, a fat black crow rapturously caws over its good fortune. I watch in morbid fascination as it tears apart a rodent. Can’t fault the crow, a natural predator. It studiously picks away at that small unfortunate animal, guts torn, splayed. The next morning, not a morsel left on the street, not even a bloodstain, I checked. Russia is tearing apart Ukraine without remorse, decimating homes, churches, schools, hospitals, piece by piece, disrupting millions, traumatizing the children, injuring and killing civilians, rippin ..read more