Category: Issue 18 – 2025
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As She Lay Dying
by Joe Oestreich My grandma Esther is laid out in a casket, riding in the open bed of a pick-up. My uncles, her sons, are driving her body from Milwaukee to the Upper Peninsula to make good on a promise. It’s 1982. February. The funeral took place this morning. Now it’s early afternoon, and the…
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mississippi choir boy sings his last sunday
by Eve Devera at mississippi baptist there’s a boy with long eyelashes.when you pass him the offering bucket,his fingers linger on yours. he’s the preacher’s boy,but he leaves the pew early and his shadow hangsin the hot air like breath in prayer against your neck.you hold a post-service picnic by the dumpsterwhere sin has never…
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we are the best lie i’ve ever told
by Isabella Ayers i love a man who takes what he wants,i leave my body so you can use it.have your fun. I’m listening to the cicadasand trying not to taste you.i’m making constellationsin the popcorn ceilingand waiting for my cigarette.i’ll be okay. if not now, soon.i just have to wait until winter,wait for snow.…
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I think I hate Charleston—
by Patrick Adkins it turned me bitter to the taste of lakewater,flattened my love for even weather,killed Charlie Hall and left his ghostwandering the green screen,while the meteorologist lieswith the same face he used in church. Charleston is a mean trick:made me despise Maryland crab cakesjust to come crawling backfor a cracked blue shell,the soft…
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Great Blue
by Deirdre Garr Johns Deirdre Garr Johns is the author of the children’s book Weathering the Storm (Palmetto Publishing, 2024) and poetry chapbook, Fallen Love (Finishing Line Press, 2025). Her work is inspired by memories of people and places. Nature is an inspiration for her writing. Deirdre’s work has appeared in SylviaMagazine, South Carolina Bards…
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Sullivan’s Island
by Jennifer Davis Michael Those images that yetFresh images beget,That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.–Yeats, “Byzantium” I’m walking this Carolina beachso different from the Gulf ones I know well –wide, level, brown sand here,lank-ribbed like the Ancient Mariner,weird holes bubbling on its surface. No trace here of the uncounted slavesquarantined in this port, heldin the hulls…
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give thanks for the gravy
by Lucinda Trew the first Thanksgivinglike the first of everythingwas difficult after grandmother died following a long lean year of mourningwe gathered to bake pies, hold handspass plates and feast in the kitchen, aunts bustled, bumpingbacksides in a dance of raised mitted handsrelaying Pyrex dishes to the timer’s ding a coven of aproned witches wipingsteam-fogged…
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In South Carolina
by Jo Angela Edwins July 4, 2024 I just sliced a deep red tomatogrown in a kind man’s garden,a gift he gave me todayout of his kindness, and I stackedeach slice on top of a pieceof white bread slatheredin Duke’s mayonnaise,and I salted and I peppered,and I topped it all with anotherpiece of white bread…
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The Bitter Southerner: Now Available
by Alexis Rhodes Double-take at the ad copy: Ohit’s not about me. (A regular reminderis necessary.)Please note I amUnavailable.Emotional labor hours have hit their quotaand overtime is billed at a rate of$6 million per hour ormy sanity. I have picked too manybroken locksand been disenchanted with the contents. Sent my dragons to defeat offendersand my…
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The Calling and Response
by Albert DeGenova Albert DeGenova is a poet, publisher, teacher, and blues saxophonist. He is the author of five books of poetry and two chapbooks. His most recent is Human Nature from Kelsay Books. He is the founder of After Hours Press and co-editor of After Hours magazine, a journal of Chicago writing and art,…
The Petigru Review 