"August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I've been listening to in the late spring and summer." Henry Rollins
AUGUST
NONFICTION & PROSE POETRY
THE LATIN NAMES FOR LIVING THINGS
SARINA BOSCO
~
A year since we made jam with the wild grapes, leaving the seeds in for the crunch. We have become the botanists of failed friendship; always I will offer you lilacs. Always we will stand ankle-deep in copper mud, searching out raspberries among the brambles. You say trout lily and blood root and I know we are both afraid of never finding love. I will show you the house in the woods, surrounded by daffodils and violets. The vernal pool with skunk cabbage. Beauty twisting from the grime. Bursting from the decay. We will cup frog eggs in our palms and tell each other fears; secrets; the men we have let enter us and leave, taking something as they go.
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WHOAMI
BILL YARROW
~
I am running around the perimeter of a collective farm at dawn. In the distance is a mountain made pink by a faint sun shining wanly on its highest snow. Four guards in four watchtowers search the surrounding terrain for attempted terrorists. This is my daily exercise, which I hope to complete before I engage in my daily chores: milking the cows, feeding the chickens, scrubbing the dining hall, policing the yard for trash.
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SOMETIMES I TALK TO YOU WHEN YOU AREN'T AROUND
ADDISON DEAN
~
Sometimes I talk to you when you aren’t around. I say, the bed is too big without you.
I roll around awake for several hours, trying to position myself accordingly to fill the space, your space, digging through the sheets and pillows looking for you and your scent— only to find something that isn’t there.
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AUGUST
FICTION
(LITERARY)
RECYCLED HEART
ANNE MCMILLAN
~
The fishing boat is bleached from the sun, battered from the sea. I rub my calloused fingers along the rim where the green paint is flaking. The broken cabin door, unlatched, swings on its hinges. The floorboards are warped, the nets need mending. Crusted with barnacles, the hull begs a good scraping, and a brown tarp that covers the deck is mottled from the sun. The rigging is in disarray, the ropes are frayed. Tethered to the pier, the boat shifts in the wind like an animal restrained; it drifts away, only to be tugged and jerked back again.
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(UNCLASSIFIABLE)
ORBIT
JOE BAUMANN
~
Sheila is failing eleventh grade math because she cannot stop staring at Fergus McMillan’s blowhole. Okay, so she knows that the fibrous bulb of skin that juts out from the back of his neck isn’t really a blowhole—nothing ever spumes out or gets sucked in—but the hard flesh is folded over on itself in a grumpy scowl so it looks close enough to the real thing. She spends fourth period eyeballing it, counting the freckles along Fergus’s skin that surround the growth like witches crowding around a cauldron. Sometimes she imagines lines connecting those blurpy blemishes, creating new constellations that she names after her sister’s stuffed animals: Marcie Mouse, Teddy Blondie, Narbo the Dragon.
Continue reading.
ORBIT
JOE BAUMANN
~
Sheila is failing eleventh grade math because she cannot stop staring at Fergus McMillan’s blowhole. Okay, so she knows that the fibrous bulb of skin that juts out from the back of his neck isn’t really a blowhole—nothing ever spumes out or gets sucked in—but the hard flesh is folded over on itself in a grumpy scowl so it looks close enough to the real thing. She spends fourth period eyeballing it, counting the freckles along Fergus’s skin that surround the growth like witches crowding around a cauldron. Sometimes she imagines lines connecting those blurpy blemishes, creating new constellations that she names after her sister’s stuffed animals: Marcie Mouse, Teddy Blondie, Narbo the Dragon.
Continue reading.
AUGUST HIGHLIGHTED CONTRIBUTORS:
Joe Baumann possesses a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he served as the editor-in-chief of Rougarou: an Online Literary Journal and the Southwestern Review. He is the author of Ivory Children: Flash Fictions, and his work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, Zone 3, ellipsis…, and many others. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at St. Charles Community College in St. Charles, Missouri, and has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. He is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of The Gateway Review: A Journal of Magical Realism.
Sarina Bosco is a chronic New Englander and reluctant homeowner. When not writing, she can most likely be found washing dishes or hiking the surrounding area. Her work has previously appeared in Cider Review, The Missing Slate, The Sonder Review, and others.
Addison Dean.
Born in Minnesota, Anne McMillan is a writer, opera singer, mountain hiker, nature lover and proud Olympic mom living in Spain. She recently completed her first novel, The Heart of the Aria and has published in the Madrid Writers’ Club Anthology, Litro Online and Sixfold. She received second prize for her story ‘Garajonay’ in Sixfold in 2017.
Bill Yarrow, Professor of English at Joliet Junior College and an editor at Blue Fifth Review, is the author of The Vig of Love, Blasphemer, Pointed Sentences, and five chapbooks, most recently We All Saw It Coming. He has been nominated eight times for a Pushcart Prize. Against Prompts, his fourth full-length collection, is forthcoming from Lit Fest Press in 2018.
Joe Baumann possesses a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he served as the editor-in-chief of Rougarou: an Online Literary Journal and the Southwestern Review. He is the author of Ivory Children: Flash Fictions, and his work has appeared in Eleven Eleven, Zone 3, ellipsis…, and many others. He teaches composition, literature, and creative writing at St. Charles Community College in St. Charles, Missouri, and has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. He is the founding editor and editor-in-chief of The Gateway Review: A Journal of Magical Realism.
Sarina Bosco is a chronic New Englander and reluctant homeowner. When not writing, she can most likely be found washing dishes or hiking the surrounding area. Her work has previously appeared in Cider Review, The Missing Slate, The Sonder Review, and others.
Addison Dean.
Born in Minnesota, Anne McMillan is a writer, opera singer, mountain hiker, nature lover and proud Olympic mom living in Spain. She recently completed her first novel, The Heart of the Aria and has published in the Madrid Writers’ Club Anthology, Litro Online and Sixfold. She received second prize for her story ‘Garajonay’ in Sixfold in 2017.
Bill Yarrow, Professor of English at Joliet Junior College and an editor at Blue Fifth Review, is the author of The Vig of Love, Blasphemer, Pointed Sentences, and five chapbooks, most recently We All Saw It Coming. He has been nominated eight times for a Pushcart Prize. Against Prompts, his fourth full-length collection, is forthcoming from Lit Fest Press in 2018.
