In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors Hannah Bonner's criticism has appeared in Cleveland Review of Books, Literary Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Her first collection of poetry, Another Woman, is forthcoming in 2024. She lives in Iowa. Chase Culler is a writing teacher and bookseller in Boston. He's held fellowship positions with his two

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Venus's Flytrap John Jeremiah Sullivan (bio) "This plant," wrote Darwin, "is one of the most wonderful in the world." He was talking about the Venus flytrap, Latin name Dionaea muscipula. That's its Linnaean binomial, anyway—an irony, seeing as how Linnaeus Doubted its existence, as "against the order of nature as willed by God." Dionaea

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Girls I've Known Urvi Kumbhat (bio) Nikki. Under the sprawling banyan tree, we promised to be best friends forever—it was easy like that, in kindergarten. I met her first, so she was mine. We both knew Santa Claus wasn't real. We both loved lizards. We spent all day gathering smooth pebbles from the grounds, hurtling down the slides and

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Small Vices Eduardo Martínez-Leyva (bio) Snow illuminated the park and you wanted to die. That winter you slept with a saucer of water under your bed. Every night. Woke up to find nothing but the off-white-stare of the empty cup. Spelled out your fantasies on my upturned palms. They were dirty. Unsayable. Between us ran a long line of

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Last Best Ghost Boy Jami Nakamura Lin (bio) 1 We had the bad luck to come of age at the beginning of the end. Our senior year coincided with the season of tempests and pestilence. And although some of our surviving peers later made their livelihoods writing glib op-eds with names like "The Year that Fuck Around Turned into Find Out

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Submersions Jasmin Sandelson (bio) A massage therapist I see a few times a year settles me face down, tucks a towel into my underwear. With firm hands, she thumbs my neck, shoulders, hips. "Usually," she says, "your shoulders are tight. But today, your hips. Why?" My shoulders get tight because childhood gymnastics left my spine flexible

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: America's Museum Chase Culler (bio) The email came to me in the basement of what I then called my life: unemployed, twenty-three years old, still living too close to campus. Looking to travel the globe? Become a Program Advisor for Stoddard's pre-college tours. My parents were thrilled to hear their eldest would travel Europe. Really any

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Mrs. Flowers Mary Jo Salter Five minutes before the concert begins.I'm sitting next to some old guy—even older than I—and ask him some idle questions. Does he live nearby?Oh, did he walk then?I walk that street, I know his view—right on a little public garden. Nothing fancy, and yet delightful.I picture the spring newlywedsposing for photographersbefore

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Husbands and Wives:On Sarah Manguso's Liars Hannah Bonner (bio) Liars by Sarah Manguso ( Hogarth 2024) Here is a story as common as vanity or violence: In the beginning, I fell in love with a man. He was an English professor and read dog-eared paperbacks of Nietzsche. He was married, wore a beanie, and sported many indecipherable tattoos

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: One More Loca:On Pedro Lemebel Lily Meyer (bio) A Last Supper of Queer Apostles: Selected Essays by Pedro Lemebel, translated by Gwendolyn Harper ( Penguin Classics 2024) In 1994, the queer Chilean writer and performance artist Pedro Lemebel visited New York—"all-expenses-paid," he notes in his sharp-tongued travelogue "New York Chronicles

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Eleanor Caitlin McCormick That first day, Margaret learned that Eleanor didn't actually like coffee and that her wife was dead. "My wife spent a lot of time here," she said, gesturing to the café's outdoor seating and chalkboard menu. "She died a couple years ago." Eleanor paused. "Actually, let's be specific. She died three years ago

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Riding off into the Sunset:Starring Gary Cooper William Gay (bio) In the west, the sun had gone as the last vestiges flared in chromatic red and orange and windrows of lavender clouds dulled to smoke gray. Somewhere westward, night was already facing him, and he went on toward it as if he and the darkness had some appointment to keep.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Two Poems Matthew Nienow (bio) History There is no way I can explain the pastin a manner that doesn't somehowfree the sparrow from the barn,but not before it crashes against the glassover and over, falling to the bench. Stunnedand on its back, I scooped the sparrowfrom the wood and carried it outsidewhile it slowly turned its headand nipped

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: False Light:Moral Worldbuilding and the Virtues of Evil Brandon Taylor (bio) In 2018, a young nurse living in England, Lucy Letby, was charged with seven counts of murder and ten counts of attempted murder. Many of these acts were alleged to have taken place over a period of time running from 2015 to 2016, a period during which Letby did

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors Maeve Barry is a writer in New York. You can find more of her stories at maeve-barry.com. Hannah Bonner’s criticism has appeared in Cleveland Review of Books, Literary Hub, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Her first collection of poetry, Another Woman, is forthcoming in 2024. She lives in Iowa. Jacky Grey

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Corona John Jeremiah Sullivan (bio) The fjords of Norway are one of the places I always hoped to see before I die. If you had told me thirty years ago that when I finally experienced them, I would find myself so racked with the fever and chills of coronavirus that my sweat soaked through to the mattress and my very eyeballs twitched, I

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Till It and Keep It Carrie R. Moore (bio) In the beginning, there was her sister’s breathing. Which meant neither of them had died. It was faint, a slip of sound in the truck’s stillness. But it reached into the front seats and nudged Brie awake. She lay over the console, an ache in her ribs, sweat on her eyelids. Against her wrist, morning

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The World As It Was Didi Jackson (bio) When the moon has gone I fly on alone —W. S. Merwin That wolf of a day, the woodlands of my new grief:you ate all the words, you fed me only worry.Now it is all I can eat for years and years to come.You wove a blanket of wool that covers me, the threadslike worms. My grief is an empty womb as pink

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Long Sleeves Kanak Kapur (bio) On New Year’s Eve, we left Sai’s house wearing jeans and something with long sleeves. Inside the cab, we took off our shirts and wrapped them around our waists. Underneath we had on our party clothes: skintight tops shoplifted the weekend prior from an overflowing sale bin. It was Sai’s job to confirm the

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: From the Other Side of a Migratory Silence: On the Work of Patricia Smith Joy Priest (bio) In 2022, my grandmother went on to glory, as the old folks say. The last of her generation up from Alabama, she was ninety years old. Anna Priest’s life came to a close as she was sitting in her favorite chair in her living room on East 126th Street

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up, and: It’s Pinned Above My Desk—That Picture, and: Just Another Day in Fourth Grade Patricia Smith (bio) We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up 1. I smell the cloying stink of a particular religion etchingits gospel on the scrubbed, unworried side of the rollingshutters. It’s the funk

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Things of My Mother’s Jacky Grey (bio) For the few weeks leading up to my ninth birthday, I had scraped enough good behavior together to ask for an ice cream cake. The closest Dairy Queen was twenty miles away. Going to town just to get cake was a big deal. Birthday cakes were usually a box mix with a tub of frosting. Ice cream cakes were

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Still Life With Sky, Coffee, Tulips, Anna Karenina, and God Shannon Pratson (bio) Grocery store tulips. Empty coffee cupin the sink. Morning sky smearedpink, like the insideof a salmon. I have been lonely in so many citiesand now I am lonely in absenceof the city, the crowd at the Metthat made me small and wholeas a seed. How do other

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Girabella Maeve Barry (bio) When my school friends play, they pretend to be mothers. I pretend to be God. Or I put a blanket over my head and imagine I birthed His son. I carry plastic babies by their arms like they’re skinned kittens. I never once think about parenting. I think about angels rejoicing. My image emblazoned on hundreds of

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Maze, and: Maze, and: Maze Richie Hofmann (bio) Maze Room of flowers, room of hunger: the hoursI could sleep inside. There was something I wanted my life to be. Roomin which I possessed someone and was in turn possessed.Rooms in which I reached for a man, even when he was with someone else. Once I was so scared,I slept in my shoes. Another

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: On Get Back Lorrie Moore (bio) The Beatles: Get Back directed by Peter Jackson (2021) The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present by Paul McCartney, edited by Paul Muldoon (2021) (consulted: Lennon Remembers by Jann S. Wenner; All We Are Saying by David Sheff; Love And Let Die by John Higgs; George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle by Philip Norman;

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: This Sort of Thing:On Heather Lewis’s Notice Hannah Bonner (bio) For a couple of months in my early thirties, I engaged in an online flirtation with a married couple on the kink app Feeld. They were white, indeterminately wealthy, and looked like a Tommy Hilfiger inlay. In the beginning, I communicated solely with the Wife. She was peppy

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Domme Song 7 Michael Robbins (bio) It rained the whole time but you zip-tied meto a chair, so it all worked out. Green world,peculiar tabernacle. Blake had a fear of wheels.Please beat the big dumb feelings out of me.There are the bugs you’re supposed to kill andthe bugs that eat the bad bugs so you spare them.Which kind I am is TBD. I

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: From Ganges to Hudson Buku Sarkar (bio) At seven in the morning, like any other day, Mr. Munshi left his home and made his way three blocks down Lexington Avenue. He walked by the same trees and the same windows and the same corner deli at exactly the same hour, when everything was quiet. Rather than feeling fresh and rejuvenated from

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Profoundest Interruption:In Defense of Distraction Caitlin Horrocks (bio) Evil is whatever distracts. –Franz Kafka I’ve had this quote on my phone’s camera roll since September 2021, when I saw it written on a sandwich board sign outside a skate shop in my neighborhood. Kafka’s declaration stopped me in my tracks: Evil? Really? Maybe

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Don’t Leave a Good Time Looking for a Good Time Michael Bazzett (bio) is advice I received from a colleaguewith an incongruous ponytailwho once gave his students a testwith only one problem: Define Mathematics.He looked wistful as he relayedtheir consternation and befuddlementover a bowl of forlorn noodlesin the school cafeteria. When

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: 404 Peter Kispert (bio) Charles was getting better—healing I mean, after last year had tortured us both—and it was completely ruining the plan. For the better part of two years, we spent sleepless nights in small single-floor sublets in and around Boston, living among broken ovens and cheap white fridges that shook themselves awake and

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Barest Horizon: Jamel Brinkley’s “Bartow Station” Garth Greenwell (bio) One of my questions about “Bartow Station,” from Jamel Brinkley’s second collection, Witness, is what makes the story seem so bottomlessly deep, since really it’s quite simple, quite contained in its materials. Narrated by an unnamed, youngish man, it takes place

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Planter Box Conceit, and: Be With Cate Lycurgus (bio) Planter Box Conceit How vain, to anticipate what’s beensown, foretell how the buriedwill swell. Zucchini overwhelmthe raised beds—stems straight-armout with stop-sign palms—so wide, sodeeply lobed—no companioncan grow alongside, but—whereare we merely asked to whelm? Underthe foliage

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Maroon Sonia Feigelson (bio) My father wants to buy me a bikini. “It’s not an option,” he says, “to wear some ratty old thing to the infinity pool.” I prefer to be ratty, which is our central problem. My father is devoted to proving that he knows the truth about me. To him, the world is not a matter of needing but of acquiring. Just kidding

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Before the DMZ, and: Faint Cindy Juyoung Ok (bio) Before the DMZ My moth- er sent a photo of the federal build- ing she was being naturalized in, writing, Boring I love you. That winter her father revealed he left behind a first wife, two kids, north before the war, the news unremarkable because For us, everybody had somebody they— So

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Galocher Keith Leonard (bio) The pepper-hint in the arugula.The vinegar pinchin the homemade dressing.The sweet potatowith its puck of butterlighting up our lips.Dinner is the only timewhen what’s going onin your mouth is alsogoing on in my mouth.It’s dinner and it’s kissing.Kissing as the French do.But the French don’t call it“French

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Homage to Richmond Barthé, and: Night Walk, and: After A Year Sober, and: Homage to Lyle Ashton Harris, and: To Sleep, and: The Age of Pleasure Derrick Austin (bio) Homage to Richmond Barthé If Barthé’s Boy with a Flutehas completed his performance,eyes rising to meet the eyes of the one who listenedseated in a flowering grove,then, perhaps

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Anachronisms Olivia Nathan (bio) 1 The night before her history test, T’s legs turned into lightbulbs. Hoot, the family Pomeranian, had been sitting beneath her desk, and T accidentally kicked him as she crossed her legs. In a show of defiance, he left her room and trotted downstairs. T didn’t notice. She forgot the new purplish pimple

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Gray Morning, and: Wind, and: Against Michael McGriff (bio) Gray Morning We’ve come to think of life hereas one elongating seasonmarked with a tap-and-die sky,a fistful of birds tossedagainst the rag light.My son asks the unanswerablequestions. Each query linksto the next, coal cars pulledtoward the lung-dark trellishis pain builds into

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: First Wife Madeline Cash (bio) Bud took four Seconal, masturbated into a tea towel, and decided to drive the Subaru into the sea. The passenger seat was piled with empty take-out containers. Looking over the discarded items, Bud felt like one himself. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the rearview mirror, the face of a man who hadn’t

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Soundings Rachel Rinehart (bio) Suddenly, it is nightand the technicianis holding not a wandbut her leather marksand plummet. Still, we see only static,only mist roilingover the horizon,where maybe you are a soft light in shadows.Row closer, my child,let me kiss the slip of you,your little body unmadein its making. Let me put my lipsto

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Good Grief: On The 2023 Booker Prize Ryan Chapman (bio) A week after the 2022 Booker Prize award ceremony, Rishi Sunak became the first British Indian to be appointed Prime Minister. He was the third PM in as many months. This milestone received a shrugged acknowledgement from my Sri Lankan uncles back in Minnesota, whose enthusiasm for

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: At Tangled Rob Colgate (bio) We are about to host our first in-person event at the galleryin three years. Sam, Sachin, and I spend two hours tryingthe owl-shaped camera that will track whoever is the speakerand spotlight them on the synchronous livestream event.Rumi and Jessie are over in the corner of the office figuring outwhat food

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Nowhere Spaces Holly Goddard Jones (bio) Over COVID lockdown, my kids and I got into the habit of watching fantasy cartoons each night before bed. One of our favorites was Hilda, a Netflix series inspired by an also-excellent graphic novel series by Luke Pearson. There’s a lot to love about Hilda, which tells the story of the titular character

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors Alexandra Burack is the author of On the Verge (Plinth Books). She was founding editor of Lumina and Invert and currently serves as a poetry reader for the Los Angeles Review. She is the recipient of grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts as well as from the Ludwig Vogelstein and Haymarket Foundations. She teaches

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Two Poems Maria Zoccola (bio) helen of troy folds laundry in a dim room i don't know if you have ever started growingaway from yourself. a ribbed shuck peeled down,inch by inch, from the gold. shadows on the dirt:corn bending toward the harvester, leaning forward in relief. [End Page 597] helen of troy cranks the volume on "like a prayer"

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Keeper and the Tether Genevieve Plunkett (bio) Mom says we moved here because the schools are better, but we know that it's really because Dad fell in love with Allie and Mom can't stand that. She tells me and Sis our new school's director was raised a Quaker, like that will make us understand what all the hype is about, but we are

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Demarcation Alexandra Burack (bio) Third grade, beside the water fountain.A boy kissed mefor the first time, then spat uglygirls smell like old sandwiches.Lucky to have learnedthat certain slant of love,the metal scent of doing without. High school graduation, basement couch.A girl kissed mefor the first time, then exhaledme like the spittled

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Divided Pamela Royston Macfie (bio) 1 I remember nothing of the actual moment in which the horse and I fell to earth. Everything of the taste of blood, the crack of breaking bones, the groaning of a horse in pain, the smell of dust and lather. I couldn't move; neither could the thoroughbred. Later, I was told that he had struck the top

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Two Poems Shane McCrae (bio) Penelope and The Watching Fire She burned the loom eachNight, for heat. But eachMorning it returned Whole, and draped with aRestless blue fabricA wave's skeleton The first few morningsIt appeared, she wasSurprised by the wave She had publiclyVowed she would not lay [End Page 669] Eyes upon the sea Until her

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Bird of Paradise Shannon Sanders (bio) Evening fell and up came the automated glow of the citronella torches. Cassandra had noticed them as she first stepped into her boss's backyard, a dozen earthen obelisks discreetly lining the patio and the outer reaches of the lawn, and registered them as a particularly un-Jon-like aspect of his Takoma

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Two Poems Jameson Fitzpatrick (bio) Chorine I'm writing you from the head of a pin, to mark it.I think I'm the only one dancing up here.That I may pass a moment longer as a naïf.Elsewhere the angels I am sing:What does the pin pierce, and why?A map; somewhere someone will want to remember she's been.A dress; a new hem.A leg; by accident

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Guillotine Michelle Hart (bio) When Elle was twelve, her father purchased a private guided tour of the Musée d'Orsay for the two of them. He had just gotten divorced from Elle's mother, who had announced she would use the settlement to travel around Europe. Elle's father, however, wanted to win and whisked Elle away to France first. Elle

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: At the Evening Cotillions, 1964 William Logan (bio) Ah, my radical friend. Later,it was still the sixties,the soi-disant and distant sixties.The long-haired sixties, where every pair of shoes was a protest.I stole my parents' half-wrecked Mercedesto visit, sticking the long hours northto Springfield. I spent the weekend alone, watching

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Frame and the Perforations Mairead Small Staid (bio) How things seem to seem is not enough. We must somehow discover how things really seem! —Bertrand Russell Well, in the first place, what things? ________ At the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I stand before Georgia O'Keeffe's Pedernal—From the Ranch #1. "Look up pedernal," I write

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Refrain Carl Phillips (bio) My fortress has many windows; from this one,I can tell the tide's going out, I can see the small, purplish flowers,further up from the water, that you never stopped calling sea-thistle, though that's still not right. The ring of aspensthat surround my fortress, that of course know nothing of east orwest or love

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: In Praise of Panic Stephanie Danler (bio) During graduate school, one of my professors periodically fell asleep at his desk. He also took calls mid-lecture and excused himself to the hallway to have conversations with his fiancée about their upcoming travel. He was annoyed when a student wanted to talk about racism in Absalom, Absalom

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Index Volume CXXXI, 2023 FICTION Abugov, Josie Daisy the Whale 408 Ball, Bethany The Harmonica 367 Candela, María José Dark Day 507 Chao, Grace The Year I Became My Mother 277 Conklin, Lydia On the Sound 23 Hart, Michelle Guillotine 695 Karim, Sheba Goodbye, Obama 117 Marshall, Nick These Days 445 Meyer, Lily Golden Boy 219 Minot, Susan

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors Josie Abugov writes fiction and nonfiction. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she graduated from Harvard in 2023. María José Candela was born and raised in Colombia. Selected as the winner of the 2020 Indiana Review Fiction Prize, her fiction has also appeared in the Kenyon Review. Her nonfiction has been published in Roxane