Castle

By Jefferson Navicky

He began to dig the grave at the edge of the woods, and he knew he had to dig the hole deeper than he thought, but once he broke through the top layer of roots, he found the unexpected: brick after whole brick buried in the ground, and it was like the dirt stored the bricks suspended in amber, as if the earth planned to build a house one day below ground, a stately mansion for the dead to sleep in the great underground caverns inaccessible to the living, this future castle awaiting construction, but the question was when, and by whom – sweat caked on his skin, shovel in hand, standing knee deep in a hole of his own making, he wanted nothing more than to volunteer to build it.

Jefferson Navicky lives in rural midcoast Maine where he writes about barns and cats.

Art by Salvador Eaton Sharon.

Farmville

By Hannah Olsson

To sleep, my grandmother, my farmor, tells me to imagine I'm staring at a dark hole, and so I do: one cavernous mass settled just inside the fleshy part of my throat that swallows Swedish most of the time, that knit-wrapped space where I can only speak through cross-stitches, building up conversations like the pixel homestead farmor cultivates on the couch while the lottery creates lucky wallpaper over the bridge of her pursed lips;

"here I am milking the cows"..."here I am pulling the carrots"..."now it is time to fish";

we spend our days in this timeless space that feels very much like the dark holes my farmor visits avidly in her sleep, a place where we are only as fluent with each other as the extent of her gardening tools;

"and now I pick tomatoes"..."and now I go to town"...

and I nod, the way one nods when they want to say so much more.

Hannah Olsson is an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she also teaches creative writing; her work explores the monstrous beauty in grief, anxiety, pansexual love, and other all-encompassing modes of longing.

Art by Hannah Olsson.

Eelfare

By Christopher Linforth

An eel-man follows me out of the sushi restaurant asking where I am delivering the oversized platter of unakyu rolls, then if I know which river the eels came from, and I ignore him, slightly perturbed by this slick gray figure, hoping he won’t ask me any more questions, for the order’s only heading a couple of blocks away, to Sarah, my ex, though we dated so long ago she rarely acknowledges my presence, or even tips, when she orders sushi for her and her husband, her boss of many years at the law offices of Clark & Sitwell, though Sitwell’s dead, and Clark, this real shit, took over, took my girlfriend, filed a restraining order, though Sarah doesn’t mind, perhaps even enjoys watching me deliver sushi, which, of course, I spat on, and this seems to be the eel-man’s beef with me, that I defiled one of his cousins, or uncles, or babies, undoubtedly netted young, and I don’t want to find out the actual familial relationship, and so I dash away, whipsawing through the backstreets, but I can’t lose him, and soon the slap of his tail-body becomes louder as he finally corners me outside of the law offices, and I press on the app that the order’s here, and I hope someone will save me, or sue the eel-man, or hire him as an enforcer for unpaid debt, which, unfortunately, I have a lot of and don’t want to pay back to the Federal Government, for what did I get for my 100k of student loans and four years of living in a college town: a sexually sterile dorm life from which I worked on my Communications degree, then suffered endless emails from the university’s foundation asking me to donate to wrestling scholarships and a new VIP car lot at the football stadium, before scoring a few dates with Sarah, where, yes, we went for sushi, and later our graduation prom, where Sarah danced with her friends and flirted with the douchey guys from Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and a promise we would see how things went over the summer, where she had an internship at Clark & Sitwell, and that Clark had praised her can-do attitude and white-space-heavy CV during the interview, and told her women can make a difference in the law profession and asked her out for cocktails at Applebee’s, which she agreed to, later texting me that our relationship was over, if it could be called that, and she didn’t, never had, and I should find someone else, someone at my level, like a diner waitress or Walmart cashier, a girl I could eventually knock-up and start the whole cycle of loserdom over with once more, and sure I resent her for everything she put me through, however pretty she is, or thinks she is, a New York 4, if we’re honest, but I don’t really care about any of that—this is my last delivery, and then I am skipping town for a desk job in DC, maybe eventually live in Dupont Circle or Georgetown, for now I can crash on Zack’s couch in Columbia Heights, slip him a few bucks when I can, till I’ve got it all together, feel like I know the city, and once I’ve chilled with some 4/20-friendly people, snagged a cool girlfriend (harsh bangs, septum piercing), I can consider the place home, and I’ll have forgotten all about Sarah and Clark, whose first name I still don’t know, and that meeting with the eel-man, who looms over me right now, desperate for the platter, on which I have already hocked several loogies underneath the slices of eel, ready for Sarah and Clark to enjoy, and so when they appear in the lobby, eyeballing me, then eel-man, with fake shock and anger, I give them both the finger, and Sarah, unfazed, strides forward for her sushi, while Clark dials someone on his phone, so I press the cancel order button on the app and hand the platter to the eel-man, who gathers up the unakyu rolls with his stubby pectoral fins and undulates away, searching for the closest body of water.

Christopher Linforth is the author of The Distortions (Orison Books, 2022).

Art by Jay Baker, an artist from Colorado living in Oregon, by way of New Mexico; he records music as Tom Foe.