Coming Clean
by Brian Beatty
photography by author

Neighbors noticed the change. They couldn’t put their fingers on it, maybe, but something about Hurley was definitely different.
“New overalls?” the garage sale hostess finally asked him as he browsed the table of used tools, looking for anything he could resell for a profit.
“Nope,” Hurley replied. “Just caught up on my laundry.”
“I like your fancy new haircut, too.”
He didn’t take that bait. “One wash didn’t do it, but three washes handled the months of stains. The trick is not to let them dry before another really good scrub and back into the machine they go. Always in cold water.”
“Well, whatever you did worked,” the garage sale hostess said. “You look like a new man.”
Some eavesdropping lady customers agreed, which made it more than a little embarrassing for Hurley, who knew all their husbands. They might even be his buddies, if Hurley had such things.

 

 

Wildness
by Clare Roche
photography by author

I have turned middle-aged. The number is lower than I had thought when I was a glowing
sixteen, my face plump with youth and the elasticity of unknowing. My hands are now my
mothers, broad and speckled, with extravagant knuckles and veins turned ocean green. You’ll
need an oil-based hydrating anti-aging cream, judges the chirping sales assistant, looking up
and down my face. She doesn’t know I am wild. That turbulent seas swell through me. That
rivers roil behind my grey eyes. That I shake rainstorms from my feet and cause cascades
when I loosen my hair. That I am the energy of oceans. That I cannot be contained.

 

 

Shy Guys
by Erika Kanda

blue jeans for work
less worn, less worn
blue jeans for church.

 

 

VEILED
by Kim Suttell
art by author

The skin of our face is not lit.
The path we go is a hidden bend,
heedless how truth lies.

Grace is a shape shifter
a homely girl in a baggy jumper
slumping by like a folkloric test of virtue:

Be good, she wills,
as if ours is the future of giants
jostling for space to fall.

 

 

Ownership
by JR Walsh
photography by author

She says,
Those shoes
are not mine

because there’s
snakes in those.

I repeat what
I think I heard.

She says, What?
I never said that.

So the shoes,
they’re yours
or not?

Shoes are shoes,
she says,
when it rains.

 

 

White Whale
by Leandra Toomoth

I thought of you this morning. On the subway, I noticed a sign: “The distance between two points increases over time.” I think it advertised credit cards or rental cars or Caribbean cruises, but for me, it meant you. The distance between us is no longer measurable. Do you still hum Christmas carols while cooking dinner, or has that, too, been stolen like my hoodie you never returned? Even the reflection in the window was one I couldn’t recognize. Not the girl who randomly decided to get matching tattoos with you.Yin and Yang! Perfect! (We thought). I pulled my sleeves low over my wrist so no one could see the white half of our whole, which always looked more like a blanched, bloated whale. But still, for a moment, I swore I could hear it crying out beneath the fraying edges of my cardigan for its mate to return.

 

–

 

Brian Beatty is the author of poetry collections Magpies and Crows; Borrowed Trouble; Dust and Stars: Miniatures; Brazil, Indiana: A Folk Poem; and Coyotes I Couldn’t See. His stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Cowboy Jamboree, Hobart, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Monkeybicycle, Noir Nation, NOON, The Quarterly and Seventeen. Beatty lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

 

Clare Roche is Sydney based. Her poetry is published in Dwell Time (UK), Leopardskins and Lime (Berlin), and Uppagus (US). Her creative non-fiction was short-listed for the national Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Writing (2020).

 

Erika Kanda lives in Northern Virginia, USA with her partner. She enjoys speculative writing and slush pile adventures.

 

For Kim Suttell it is spreadsheets by day, poems by night. Overt displays of infatuation for her rescue dog are normal. Please visit her poems at page48.weebly.com.

 

JR Walsh is the Online & Fiction Editor at The Citron Review. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Boise State University, where he now teaches English as a Second Language. His writing is in fine publications such as NUNUM, Juked, Litro, Rougarou, Timber, Blink-Ink, 50-Word Stories, Esquire, and B O D Y. For more: itsjrwalsh.com.

 

Leandra Toomoth is a high school English teacher at McDonald County High School. Leandra earned both her B.S.Ed in Secondary Education and M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from Missouri Southern State University in Joplin, MO. She currently resides in Anderson, MO with her husband and four stepchildren and a collection of animals that currently includes chickens, cats, rats, ducks, and bunnies. When she isn’t writing or thinking about writing, Leandra enjoys the pursuits of cooking, crafting, traveling, and eating. Leandra is currently working on compiling her first anthology of poetry in addition to her upcoming debut novel.