by MARK GOODRICH Lizzy sat in the recliner her kids had bought her when they moved her into the home after Joe had died. The television was on, some news program, muted. One window in the small living room, looking … Read more

by LINDSAY WILSON Lake Buena Vista, California. At dusk, if you are lucky, this man-made lake’s surface lays as still as hand beaten metal, the thin imperfect mirror of which breaks with each fish biting at the steel ceiling of … Read more

by RICHARD SCHMITT This morning I beat the old lady next door up, which makes me happy, kick-starts the day. She’s tough to beat up that one. Kind-of-a raw old lady, bare-knuckled and hunchbacked, knobby knees and elbows, walking bow-legged … Read more

by BRANDON TIMM Failing deodorant hung thick around Lisa as she fought through the surging crowd around the zoo’s tiger exhibit. God, she could taste the people baking in the sun. Their sweat, their excitement, every expectation gliding salty over … Read more

Geri Ulrey is a writer, filmmaker, and educator living in Los Angeles. She has also been published in Gulf Coast, was a finalist for the 2016 Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, and shortlisted as a finalist for the 2015 Disquiet … Read more

by BEN MURPHY Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2016. Brian Evenson’s collection A Collapse of Horses is an experiment in incomprehension. That’s not to say that the narratives themselves are incomprehensible; rather, each of the thirteen stories depicts failures to understand. … Read more

by NIELS RINEHART “I’m telling you, I’ve been looking at that cigarette on the window sill since I got moved to this cell five years ago.” The new kid sat on the opposite bunk, holding the cigarette in the palm … Read more

SHELLEY BERG ’s stories have appeared in Phoebe and Passages North. She lives with her husband and two children in Dedham, Massachusetts, where she is working on her first novel. Her story, “The Dirty White Sky,” appeared in Carolina Quarterly … Read more

by T.J. MCLEMORE The Osage orange (that little tree by the lake we called bodark) grows fast and stays squat, blackland native stout-limbed and braiding her coarse hair. The dense flesh, perfect to make a bow arc or knife handle, … Read more

CQ Poet Hyejung Kook’s poem “Invention No. 7 in e minor” (CQ 65.1) was featured on Verse Daily: http://www.versedaily.org/2016/inventionno7ineminor.shtml