The Official Literary Journal of University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA
Poetry By Liam Strong your first time was beneath cherry blossoms queen anne’s lace & purple thistle freshly mown xmas lights burnt & heavy with July your b‑day a harvest lil eye balls distended from their sockets your red wheel barrow flush with pancake & syrup treacles of dew risen from nowhere…
FICTION By William McDonald So, a child is like an investment, you see? First you establish a partnership with your other (spouse, mate, lover, etc.), and then you start saving. And you save and you save until you feel like your partnership has established a…
GENRE FICTION By Sage Tyrtle The actors they’ve hired to play the Thompsons are all wrong. I can see them from my bedroom window, the living room lit up, the curtains open the way they never were when Angie and her family lived there. The…
POETRY By Helena Steel We’re on the phone both of us peel ing apples cut ting out the bruises and rot ten bits. She’s making a pie and me, a cake. A coincident …
DRAMATIC WORK by Ayvaunn Penn CHARACTER NAME, BRIEF DESCRIPTION, AGE, GENDER PROF. BLACK: A Black university educator 35+ Any PROF. WHITE: A White university educator 40+ Any PROF. BENTON: A Latinx university educator 40+ Any PROF. HALLOW: A university educator. Any Race. 40+ Any …
FICTION By Steven Lang She was short and thick, with dry, bloodshot eyes and skin as white as the belly of a fish. Even when she was crying—which was often—tears rarely came. She’d rub the backs of her hands into her eyes until they reddened,…
CREATIVE NONFICTION By Kerry Neville “Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to think of, and it gives her a sort of distinction among her companions. When is your turn to come?…
POETRY By Yael Valencia Aldana Alien, you are the best person I have met/not the strongest but the best/The worst thing you ever did I made you do/Drunk off our asses atop a ten-story apartment roof in Brooklyn/ I command you to climb down the…
FICTION By Mike Guerin She had been off in Australia, and quare places after that, for about twenty years. She only came home for her parents’ funeral. Carbon monoxide poisoning, like the canary in the ad. There was no carbon monoxide poisoning long ‘go ‘cos…
By Nadja Maril I lift the turquoise and purple shawl out of the storage drawer and drape it over my shoulders. The caress of the soft yarn against my skin transports me to an earlier time and place. I hear the clicking and buzz of insects through…