Dani Sandal
(dis) Connect

Dani Sandal - (dis) Connect

Fiction
Lately (2012 or forthcoming), you can read Dani Sandal in the Raleigh Review, Adirondack Review, New Orleans Review, Puerto del Sol, Monkeybicycle, Camroc Press, Mad Hatter's Review, PANK, Doctor T.J.… Read more »
Bill Snyder
Beep

Bill Snyder - Beep

Contest - 2nd Place
Bill Snyder has published in Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, Folio, Cottonwood, and Southern Humanities Review among others. He was the co-winner of the 2001 Grolier Poetry Prize, and the winner of the… Read more »
Mark Pritchard
Bullet in the Back

Mark Pritchard - Bullet in the Back

Contest - 3rd Place
Mark Pritchard is the author of two books of short stories, How I Adore You and Too Beautiful and Other Stories. His short fiction has been published by Crony, New Lit Salon, Fiction Attic, and… Read more »
Michelle Bracken
Eating Together

Michelle Bracken - Eating Together

Creative Nonfiction
Michelle Bracken is a fiction candidate in the MFA program at California State University, San Bernardino. Her work has appeared in Litro Magazine. Read more »
Mark Mitchell
Foreign Hand

Mark Mitchell - Foreign Hand

Poetry
Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock, and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty-five years as well as the… Read more »
Kate Wheeler
Hate It Here

Kate Wheeler - Hate It Here

Fiction
Kate Wheeler grew up in North Carolina among green things. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has appeared in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading and The Westchester… Read more »
Daniel Enjay Wong
Heart of Glass

Daniel Enjay Wong - Heart of Glass

Fiction
Daniel Enjay Wong received his BA from Stanford University and plans to attend medical school. His stories have appeared in Tin House, PANK, Spork Press, Monkeybicycle, JMWW, and elsewhere. He lives… Read more »
Jane O. Wayne
If Mourning

Jane O. Wayne - If Mourning

Poetry
Jane O. Wayne is the author of four books of poetry, the latest of which is The Other Place You Live (Mayapple Press, 2010). A poem of hers along with an interview appeared in Catherine Rankovic’s… Read more »
Mitchell Untch
It’s Summer This Dream

Mitchell Untch - It’s Summer This Dream

Poetry
Mitchell Untch has been published in The Los Angeles Review, New Millennium Writers Contest, The Monadnock Anthology, Nimrod Intl., The Wisconsin Review, Out of Ours, Aurorean, The Unrorean… Read more »
Vickie Fang
My Last Chance

Vickie Fang - My Last Chance

Fiction
Vickie Fang is a reformed trial lawyer with a recent MFA degree. She is now writing full time and has completed a literary thriller about two antagonists from the Chinese Cultural Revolution who meet… Read more »
J.R. Tappenden
R is for Rhoda Consumed by a Fire

J.R. Tappenden - R is for Rhoda Consumed by a Fire

Poetry
J.R. Tappenden is the founding editor of Architrave Press. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Missouri – St. Louis where she also served as the university’s first Poet Laureate.… Read more »
Colleen Abel
Remake: The Kiss

Colleen Abel - Remake: The Kiss

Poetry
Colleen Abel is the author of Housewifery, a chapbook (dancing girl press, 2013). A former Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow, her work has appeared in numerous venues including The Southern Review,… Read more »
Jennifer Givhan
Ritual With Fish Water

Jennifer Givhan - Ritual With Fish Water

Poetry
Jennifer Givhan was a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship recipient, as well as the 2013 DASH Literary Journal Poetry Prize winner, an… Read more »
Paige Towers
The Cooldown

Paige Towers - The Cooldown

Creative Nonfiction
Paige Towers earned her B.A. from the University of Iowa and her MFA from Emerson College, where she also taught Creative Writing and Composition. She currently lives in New York City, teaches in the… Read more »
William Black
The Pleasure Dome

William Black - The Pleasure Dome

Fiction
William Black's fiction and critical essays have appeared in Crazyhorse, Threepenny Review, Southern Review, The Sun, World Literature Today, Boulevard, and elsewhere. Read more »
Joanne M. Clarkson
The Stone Masons

Joanne M. Clarkson - The Stone Masons

Contest - 1st Place
Joanne M. Clarkson’s fourth poetry collection, Believing the Body, was published in 2014 by Gribble Press. She was awarded a 2014 GAP grant from Artist Trust to complete her next full-length volume.… Read more »
Stephanie Lenox
The Take This Job and Shove It Ode

Stephanie Lenox - The Take This Job and Shove It Ode

Poetry
Stephanie Lenox is the author of the poetry collection Congress of Strange People (Airlie Press) and the poetry chapbook The Heart That Lies Outside the Body (Slapering Hol Press). Poems from a… Read more »

It’s Summer This Dream

Mitchell Untch

Wind circles. Apricots fall.
Noises from the highway drift upward.
Like water from streams that splinter
against rocks, a car horn becomes a splash,
an arrival that moves toward then
away from me, the only thing that opens
the day’s stillness, stirs nests.
Early, I feed the horses, fill troughs,
ice I break with warmer water.
In the afternoon I stalk crows, hunt lizards.
I pitch stones across the surface of pond.
Each one flies further than the last,
each one, a note that rings.
I count the circles of sunlight.
I run through sheets my grandmother
pins on the clothesline, wrap myself
up like a ghost, turn my face into a mask.
I live inside the laughter I become.
Where my voice takes shape,
my arms fly open, wide as barn doors.
Let’s say it is fearlessness.
Let’s say it is the completeness of love.
Let’s say it is being for all the right reasons,
here, where my grandmother sits
in her lawn chair, quiet as silk, here,
where the brim of her hat scoops upward,
a veil of shade I sail past as she watches me
squirt the wind with the garden hose,
shake the water from my hair,
my laughter as loose as I will ever know it,
all these years gone, like the ringing
on the pond, where a breeze shuffles
through me, thick with love.
It’s summer this dream.
And she is the breeze. She is the pond.
Read more »