There are certain things one would prefer not to imagine. For example the moment she discovered the poor thing, whose name was Humbert, half-shredded by the neighbor-dog, with whom we had been on friendly relations preceding that point. P

You should see the underwear I’ve got on. They’re so

beige, and ankle length with a waffle pattern.

That’s right, baby, long johns.

Does that make you hot? Yeah? Then please

let me press up against you.

It’s -20˚ before wind chill,

I haven’t felt my toes since Tuesday.

The first time my girl and I kissed, it was so sudden—my arm shot out, knocking the milkshake we were sharing from its perch on the dash. For a moment, I imagined my mother’s anger, her beloved 1999 Honda Accord puddled with pink, but then the truth shuffled forward, breathing hot from its mouth. The car was mine now. My sole inheritance. The milkshake splashed across our laps but I was still trembling from our collision of lip and spit and tit, and barely noticed the thick cream oozing cold between our legs, down the crevices of the console, penetrating the seatbelt. It never buckled the same after that, only latching when it was wiggled just right

An erasure poem of the transcript of the Supreme Court hearing in Free Speech Coalition v. Ken Paxton, January 15, 2025

You’re forgiven if you’re already forgotten what prompted this issue, but way back in January, during a Supreme Court hearing, Justice Alito asked about Pornhub, "Is it like the old Playboy magazine? You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?" Like everyone else, we thought this was very funny. We still think it is very funny.

A themed online issue that explores what happens when parenting intersects with famous musicians. Entirely fictional, of course.

Claire had been trying to get her son, Colton, to stop harassing Rod Stewart online. She took away his phone and returned it after a conversation in the kitchen during which Colton's contrition, regret, and claim that he didn’t understand the vulgar sexual metaphors he had used struck Claire as entirely theatrical. This was a ruse or ploy so transparent it made her feel like a bad mother. She and Colton stood on opposite sides of the oak countertop. Colton tried to look like he might cry as she raised her voice. Claire thought she ought to have raised a better liar than this—and felt a twinge of regret herself.

The device promised peace. For the price, Liz was willing to try it. Over the kitchen sink, she fiddled with the package. The device looked like the ankle monitor she had worn in high school, when she had gotten drunk on strawberry wine and crashed the neighbor’s ATV. This device was smaller than that, slim like a phone.

Brian hadn’t listened to Achtung Baby in 25 years, but the baby was teething, and he'd taken to dropping the boy into the car seat and pulling up the album on his phone and driving around until the kid wore himself out, which he did almost every night right around “So Cruel.” On this night in particular, however, Brian kept on driving, past “Ultraviolet,” straight through “Acrobat,” and all the way to the end of “Love is Blindness.”

Months ago. July. Afternoon sundogs and a slaughter of fruit between us.

My husband and I lay grocery store ads and campaign mailers across the cement porch and have our way with the watermelons. Every season brings lessons. Summer’s is a vivid hunger.

it doesn’t go well, and their offspring, an angry nest of centipedes that prefers living in dreadlocks, warm and cozy, rebels against screams of walk this way, talk this way—

Regina smoked a borrowed Kool. She was tired, hot, feeling all the weight the Mississippi late June sky gave. Peter was back in jail, so it was just her and the kids, and now as she smoked every bit of her cigarette, she watched Johnny, Tammy, Rosedale, and Lil Pete play in the red dirt. Maybe if she was inside, not smoking, the two Cadillacs and cargo van would have kept driving. But she was outside, watching the kids clump around in the Mississippi clay, holding mentholated smoke in her mouth as long as she could before exhaling it into the still air that hung over everything.

They are recalling my baby. I explain this with a sardonic head wag when my boss asks why I need to leave early. He is faulty.

On Tuesday, my 4-year-old son came home from school with bite marks—three red, swollen crescent moons trailing up his arm like animal tracks.

Deirdre has no idea how to stop this. Could just say ‘stop’, she reminds herself, but no, look: Lisa’s already dimming the lights and everyone’s already setting aside their yellow squares of cake, preparing to summon the dead. The group of five women gather about Heather’s round, glass-top table, clearing it of balled wrapping paper and plastic champagne coups, bedazzled dick-shaped water guns and stray giftbags.

I know I am approaching burnout because when the crows land in our front yard, it reminds me of what it was like to be young and drunk. To be buried in a mess of limbs, slick with glitter. To be carried by the music, by girls you knew and girls you didn’t, everything blurry and iridescent.

An olfactory smorgasbord, guest edited by students in Temple University’s Writers at Work Class.

Before the vet’s house call

My tears perfumed your fur—

My wet dog remembering the river run

Your legs are too weak for today.

Leave it to the gay guys

who, like John Waters,

have a knack for making

even the trashy playful.