Excelsior!
A look at the outgoing editor's view of the past few years, and an introduction to the new era of the magazine.
Yet Part of the Scheme
by Joshua Shaw Midway through her love story, in which we are slow dancing atop a creaky fire escape, a boozy swooning to the snow’s pitter-patter as I say I love you I love you for the first time, I interrupt Eleanor to point out that if she loved me she would stop unscrewing my [...]
The Quantum Treatment
By Jeff Pfaller Dane peeled back the chain-link fence so Riley wouldn’t catch her curtain of hair as she ducked through. One more glance at the sliver of road between buildings, really just piles of stone instead of anything functional. No one drove on the Upper Roads this time of night. Driving a car meant [...]
Heather
By Anne Carly Abad Every cell in the bud’s body vibrated to the girl’s voice. “Fern, cattail, lily, sedge, violet, anemone,” she imparted her knowledge of the wetlands. They were all distinct, and the bud saw them as the girl did: the fiddleheads that characterized ferns, the creamy clusters of meadowsweet, the heart-shaped leaves of [...]
God, Mother of All and Nothing, the Mission Is Complete
By Zack Wentz I know the sound of fingers being busted under a boot well. I’ve busted so many. But these boots are not mine. These boots belong to the man holding the Doctor’s Drive, standing on my fingers. So close. So close, we are in this way together touching. My boots are massive [...]
On the Inside
By Julie Sondra Decker Zero “It’s a boy!” I do what newborn babies do. I take my first breath and cry. It’s one of the only times in my life I did what was expected of me. If I’d understood what my father’s words had sentenced me to, the crying would have been on [...]