Prose
“My aunt told me she was getting married again last weekend. This is her fourth, I think. I was little for her first, my first wedding too. On the ride to the church (Baptist because that’s what the groom was), my mom kept muttering, Shotgun, it’s a shotgun wedding I tell ya.”
Jordan Muscal
“Damon let go of my hand to grab Simon’s red bag. I frowned at that, but didn’t really mind—Simon was his best friend after all.”
Chloe Cho
“The middle-aged man had to remind himself what had no meaning—the paper, of course, of course.”
Samuel Teoh
“The young man contemplated the lake: still, peaceful, untainted. The very opposite of his soul, he mused, with a small, involuntary smile.”
Sofia Aparicio
Poetry
“What’s it like / being the metal bridge / between creation / and destruction?”
Suhjung Kim
“O why can’t I be free from sin, / Be born anew, again begin?”
Aliza Keefer
“mother, I’m sorry I stopped calling. / eternity is hard to chew”
Violet Hetherington
“the sky is plum, the hills tear and trench / as the earth rips every limb and tendon of his corpse apart”
Nina Rowlands
“Do not see the broken / skin, the soft, the rotting, the dent”
Suhjung Kim