Category: Issue 18 – 2025
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Rotten Clementines
by Patrick Adkins Jay lived in a slumped beige duplex just past the Watershed Glen train tracks—a place that looked like it had been built in one frantic day and forgotten the next. Mold ghosted the air vents. The front step clung to the doorway like a scab—too tender to tear away without drawing blood.…
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Call Me
by Lisa Underwood I lie down too tired to brush my teeth, staringat an eighth-grade picture of you, your mouthbrilliant with metal, your green eyes begginglove me love me. I shut it in the drawer, out ofsight, out of mind, like all the things I keep inframes, on shelves, in closets, the boxes oftrading cards…
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For Cliff
by Olivia Dorsey Peacock a letter for great-grandpa your children insist i know nothing of survival could not imagine tilling soil with hands raw excavatinglife from snow the harshness of your wordswaking at dawn caressing young hands that churnedcows’ milk into butter nursingthe wounds of a beaten and aging brother could not imagine escaping fields…
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Egg Salad
by Jade Rivera Bowden The cheese had blackened around the edges. She dug her fingernail in, scraping the charred bits onto the floor of her car, slamming the brakes at the last second to keep from rear-ending the car in front of her. Her students had been particularly annoying that day. The closest she could…
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Fireflies
by Valerie Thompson I learned about sex the night I beat up Billy Sims for picking on my younger brother. I was eleven and was spending the summer with my grandparents in Porterdale, KY, a coalmining town in the foothills of the Appalachians. It was such a small town that children had to find ways…
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The Watchers
by J.W. Gibeau “Jazzy, don’t throw that water out the door. You might anger the Watchers,” Mama yelled from the kitchen. Jazmine rolled her eyes and stopped just short of the door. She set the bucket down. Only a few inches of saltwater remained in the bucket from carrying the blue crabs. “I know,” Jazmine…
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Seeing
by Grace Stroup Seeing There must have been so much I just wasn’t seeing. At the end of August, I began nannying for a sweet and stout fifteen-month-old who goes by the silly name of Bird. So now, I begin my Monday and Tuesday mornings reading at my kitchen table, usually some kind…
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Sweet Dreams and the Eater-Eater
by Abby Short “Do you remember your dreams? I don’t recall mine either. The Eater-Eater probably got to them. You know, the Eater-Eater? He just eats. And eats. And eats. And eats, and yet can never seem to get quite enough. A single sugar grain, even an imagined one, is enough to trigger the inner…
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The Marsh Ghost
by Lorien Lucero Drew climbs out of the truck and whistles as heat blankets him, sweat misting his forehead in moments. He wipes it away. At least the sloped shoulder where he parked is shaded, though he wonders if the trees on either side only trap the sweltering air. He peers up and down the…
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Taste of Sun: Eriobotrya japonica
by Jacquelyn Markham Japanese plums, loquats, saffron clusterspasted on palmish evergreen leavesin breezes swinging.Another spring blooms.Let’s gather them & slice the fruit.Each one a center of smooth seed,a sculptor could carve a tiny face from. Loquat in saffron clusters.Let’s gather them & slice the fruit,concoct a yellow cocktail with icestirred in. Laugh & toastto love…
The Petigru Review 