Welcome to issue 25.
To some degree the literary review is an attempt to isolate a foundational concept from its own opposites. Questions of motivation point back to neuroses. Nevertheless the f.c. is here. It comes from humanity. We are operating by it. Feeling we hold morality, it’s a shock to discover the opposites are operating by it too. Even the bots, marketing, and propaganda are built atop it.
We are born craving a touchstone. And uncertainty brings rise to pattern-making. But the subject of the pattern is based upon a touchstone. We have to have ideas we can rely on; otherwise all this is unbearable.
The f.c. is not defined in this intro. To put it together, read on.
Fiction
Xylophone by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
“to friend everyone who complains”
The Roundhouse by Max Johansson-Pugh
“those with carious smiles”
Interview With An Element: Mercury by Jacqueline M. Pérez
“Typical god, you only saw what you wanted”
The School’s on Fire! by Gordon J. Stirling
“I’d seen him wearing some rock band t-shirts”
Your Wife Was Just Here by Karen Walker
“She winced. I smirked.”
Poetry
The Rock Opera of October by Dmitry Blizniuk
“stands, looking crazy, humanized by its woe”
maritime : tar :: shuck : destine by Logan Ellis
“to kiss the river home”
Schrödinger’s Hummingbirds by Matthew James Friday
“firing through airy lines of possibility”
We’re waiting for an update. by DS Maolalai
“to lose / without the pleasure of quitting”
Finding Repose by Heather Sager
“feel your heart buckle in mutiny”
FUNK X FOUR by Gerard Sarnat
“my baby sister could fly there to claim whatever looked good”
Audrey by Bobbi Sinha-Morey
“another carcass to be / removed”