My bellybutton is amazing. It is a mysterious gastrointestinal portal. It is beautiful, and shapely, and inward-looking, and it is powerful. My bellybutton is remarkable. It creates more lint than a dryer. I have no need for a lint catcher. Why would I need something I can create in my own time, with nothing but my body and the clothes on my back?

Nine-Hundred Luv-Talk
by Aaron Case

Alex was maybe two the first time I saw him use a telephone. We were in my parents bedroom, all taking turns talking to my father who was in Frankfurt, Germany. Not for any Germanic reason, but because that was his job.
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Our man Dutch hated Missouri, but at least the weather, he thought, was warm enough. He stretched his arm out the short and narrow, concrete window; his slim, double-jointed elbow rocked backwards a bit to catch just a little of the sunset that couldn’t leak into his cell. He let his gaze saunter over the haunting stretch of orange sky outside. All that could be seen of the land was in his imagination. Missouri was there in some abstract form lying beyond a weave of metal fences and one very high and very thick wall. Prisons within prisons.

It's Williamsburg, the height of wedding season. Chaya hasn't been there in years, except for the occasional trip to visit to her mother. She, like most of the Jews, moved on to bigger and better things, like expensive cars, flashy jewelry, and big houses on Bedford Avenue. She remembers watching the shootings from the window of the apartment on Roebling, remembers her mother being attacked in the hallway on the way home from work, and in remembering all of this she's glad it's all behind her.

I was splattered on the walls and soaked into the carpet. I felt like a worm in a compost heap in hell. Everything was Slayer red and there was someone standing over me wearing a goat mask, and there was a kind of stygian fog coming off of the mask. There was no way to get a handle on the visage – it morphed evilly, by turns mocking, sensual, atramentous.

On my way to search a lost kingdom's home,
ramblers in a torch-buttered tavern
say that while the king slept,
the archers on the walls forgot about whetstones,

Alex was maybe two the first time I saw him use a telephone. We were in my parents bedroom, all taking turns talking to my father who was in Frankfurt, Germany. Not for any Germanic reason, but because that was his job.

Scallops by Isaac Steinzor

A tear of sweat worked its way down the Highway Patrolman's forehead, across the doughy mounds of flesh that hugged his eyesockets and along his cheek, until it beaded on the corner of his upper lip, where he licked it off. He looked like he was made of rubberized foam, or, if you were hungry, funnelcake.
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I stood in a brightly-lit exhibit room
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
admiring a painting formerly loved
as a Rembrandt masterpiece,

I lie here, stripped of emotion. Your sheets and comforter are pure white, the sunlight reflecting off of it. Your chest rises and falls in a deep yet slow sequence. Your right arm was wrapped behind my back, and would probably be numb when you woke. What would everyone else say if they knew where we were, what we were doing? We shared an apartment with four other guys, who all played a varsity sport or had in the past. This is the farthest thing from what would be expected from you, because of your position here. You have everything to lose from this. You will lose everything for loving me.

There's a vast green field that sits as easy as the morning sea. Calm yet treacherous, and without danger. Time has returned again and again to a fossilized space; it is evening. Each hill rises and slumps like permafrost of waves are frozen beneath the rich soil. But this place is no tundra, not even near. It's a chaparral of cool breezes. The breath of the birds among a turning deep blue sky. At this particular time of night, the clouds are off in some other state, in some other country, soaring across the sky of someone else's backyard. They're not here, they're somewhere to accompany the divorced sun; to waver as they soar belly-up to an amenable orange drench.

“Alright, I’ll see you later,” I say, leaning in to kiss him. It feels strange. It has for the past few weeks.

“Yeah, bye.” That’s a great way to treat the mother of your child, Peter. I readjust my bag as I head for the door. I feel him watching me as I step out into the cool air.

Albany in the springtime.

The Dream Queen by Paula Anderson

TBN was broadcasting an old and poorly technicolored production of Romeo and Juliet... Romeo was talking of his love... and how he dreamed of her and Mercutio was answering his friend... “O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you: She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than a n agate-stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomi over men's noses as they lie asleep.
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Fear tickled the back of John’s throat. He didn’t want to be there, not tonight, not in that dark alley. A warm fire, a good book and smooth whiskey waited for him at home. He swallowed back the tickle and twitched the stress from his shoulders. It didn’t matter what he wanted, he had a job to do.