Pepper Crab, Fiction by Sara Rauch

September 6, 2016

He steps onto the pier, fists clenched at his sides, careful of the wide gaps between planks, where he sees the restless gray-green water. Clutched in his palm is a chunk of purple agate, bought just now, when they’d gotten off the bus. Tess bought one too, smaller, more smoothed than his—it must be in her pocket, because she’s ahead of him, leaping from plank to plank like a ballerina, arms wide, palms open. Her hair, long and tangled, ripples behind her. He’s a better swimmer than Tess, but Tess isn’t afraid of drowning.

Poetry by Jayme Russell

August 29, 2016

black fur brown gloves doom
and divorce but wait
riding pants at the ski resort
not ready for French Traditional
…she’s hiding something…

Poetry by Cade Leebron

August 26, 2016

Or I’ll call you scleroses. I won’t say my brain
is melting, my brain is dissolving. The Temporarily Able
-Bodied don’t like metaphorical bodies. Only sick & not-sick.

This Is My Secret That I Live With Every Day

August 26, 2016

Listening to my social work colleagues talk about clients: "She is nuts," "She is crazy," "Psycho!"

Shhhhh, stay silent. I have a secret.

Poetry by Audrey T. Carroll

August 26, 2016

an hour of closed eyes ignoring
pseudo hockey mask and tight
quarters of a human shaped
tube like a plastic coffin;

Poetry by Sarah Lilius

August 25, 2016

In May, I scribble out one to my mother. I start to hoard the pills, they line the paper, weak soldiers eager to drown. I imagine she won’t understand, like a paper doll, blank look, easy to fold.

My Hospital Stay for Self-Harm

August 25, 2016

Besides, my new roommate terrifies me. She is prowling throughout the small bedroom like a caged tiger, snarling at the hospital staff and taunting them. I’m convinced that if I so much as glance at her, her attention will shift from the nurse sitting still as a statue outside our door to me, so I stare straight ahead at the wall. Sleepy waves of deep plum and blueish teal swell and curve along the wall and I slump further and further into my thin mattress. My eyes feel heavy; my head feels heavy; I feel heavy. My roommate is throwing her things into the hall, and the nurse sounds like she has finally been coaxed into action. I am light years away, bobbing through the murky fog in my head.

Poetry By Robert Yerachmiel Snyderman

August 25, 2016

Robert Yerachmiel Snyderman is a PhD student at University of Arizona researching material poetics in contexts of incarceration, homelessness, indiginism & agriculture. Before he worked as a teacher, itinerant farmhand, & street performer. He is at work on several book projects, including Fierce Light: Selected Poems and Poetics of besmilr brigham 1948–1992. New poems, writing for performance, & essays are forthcoming in The New Farmer’s Almanac, Denver Quarterly, The Volta, & The Colorado Review.

I Don't Remember a Time Where I Didn't Have Anxiety

August 25, 2016

In elementary school, while most kids loved field trips, I was terrified by them. Field trips meant my routine would be disrupted. They meant I would be in environments that I didn't know or feel safe in. At the age of seven, I would worry about getting sick on a field trip; worried I wouldn't be taken care of, because I didn't trust anyone except my parents to take care of me. I'm fortunate I was able to trust them so deeply.

Art by Celeste Martinez

August 24, 2016

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, afraid that I am dying all over again. When a white truck drives by, I collapse within myself, afraid to move. I am 3 years old and I am in Mexico. There's images of doctors and a table. Everything is slightly tinted green. Other times, I'm in the recovery room. I'm trying to scream, but nothing comes out. That's when I remember that my mouth is sealed shut. My mother comes to me, and she drips water from a cotton ball onto my cracked lips. How did she know that's what I wanted?

What It's Like Living With Polio & Breathing in an Iron Lung

August 24, 2016

There are switches by my hands, little switches that can turn off this, turn on that. A remote control for the television, though I seldom watch it. I prefer the music of Mozart and Bach rather than canned laughter all hours of the day. I prefer nothing canned. Because, that is what I live in. A can. A big, silver bullet of a machine that has kept me alive now for over 60 years.

Her Mother's Diagnosis

August 24, 2016

"It’ll make it hard for her to remember a lot of things," he’d said, and so much more. Papa had heard it all, had listened as the doctor used words like aggressive progression and quality of life. Lily had forgotten to listen, had turned instead to the frosted glass plane that separated them from the hall outside, the place where other people were bringing their mamas in too, maybe their papas instead. A brother, a sister, a lover--it didn’t matter here. Walking that long hall toward the doctor’s office was the end of a long journey, a deafening finality.

Pretty Soon I Will Put These Ghosts To Rest

August 24, 2016

We never went hiking, and the idea of never going hiking together is what broke my heart the most.

The Secret Side of Crohn's Disease

August 24, 2016

She takes her fork and knife and slices into the chicken breast, shredding its skin and meat into pieces, bite-sized, the silvery shining blade into her meal and then, miraculous, the fork delivering food into her mouth that is savory, delicious. Then, halfway through her rapid-fire chewing and swallowing and consumption, the familiar, cloying nausea returns, a twinge that hits Rachel all at once like a gymnast toppling from a balance beam. The chicken transforms from tender to a sickly, vinegarish paste that coats the insides of her throat. Concentrate, Rachel thinks, demanding that the food stay safely contained in her body. I will not. I will not. In through the nose, out through the mouth.