Articles

I was in a pet store buying cat litter when I learned Tay was gone. Several people were buying cat litter that evening. Also, cat food and dog food, and there may have been food of other kinds in some hands—bird, rabbit, hamster, fish—as well as the inedible things we buy to sustain the health …

Devin walks his Chow Chow, Milly, among the half-dozen spruces. Mom went to the bathroom in the looming lodge, all windows and wooden pillars and green paneling. Milly squats low to poop, legs quivering, and Dev glances around because he doesn’t have a bag to pick it up. He sees a man standing at the …

Note: The source text for this hybrid piece is Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James. Lee Johnson is a LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent poet. He is a master’s student at Weber State University studying Creative Writing. His works have been published by the Sugar House Review, Passionfruit Review and 30 N Literary Review. He has …

When I hear you smile, I apologize for everything. The rain, my dollar store umbrella, the eight hours of airport salads and your dead phone battery, whatever high pressure system pushed this all your way the first weekend you’re back in town. You didn’t come all the way out to the west coast, the first …

In Vancouver I ran on icyroads each morning, then stood in the shower, scalding, thoughtof slipping. I watched the kettle til my eyes teared up,the light blurring, I made instant coffee, drove south through the redwoods, embarrassed by words, their poverty: rocks in the water like petrified whales; Joni Mitchell; sweet grapes on the passenger …

bold in bright green with yellow accents, industrial orange. To afford it, you mortgage your land, yourself. It rolls over your rich grasslands, harrowing your fields. The wild of you, marsh bunnies, garter snakes, try to skitter away, end up bloody and macerated, mowed. Mulch, microbes, the dirt of you tossed, turned to be replanted. …

I met Stan on his hands and knees, croaking to a Sonoran Desert toad that had escaped its enclosure. SDT-4, a wily and tenacious explorer according to Stan’s notes, was wedged in the space between the lab oven and the wall. Later, when I dried out SDT-4’s skin in the same oven, I concluded that …

Tonight, rain drapesthe blue acacia & the streetlights shimmer, shroudthe cars in shadows. My sick, who calls herself daughter, points at how the blossoms curl to cocoonsthen commit themselves to air. She wantsto know wherethe scavengers take them,& why at nightwhen her name emerges, they come so closeshe could reach a hand, stroke their knotted …

I mean, let’s face it: I am not the easiest person to love. When I was a child I crashed my father’s radio after my foot got tangled with the cable having jumped over it like the cow did with the moon. Hey diddle diddle, come here you little shit, and soon my legs were …

You’re still barefoot in the creek as crawdads scuttle under rocks.You’re in the kitchen too, dogunderfoot as oil swirls in a pan. You’re in the treehouse cradling a library book, peeling a sunburn.You prune the lupine, deadhead sage, pull weeds up by the roots. You float the swimming hole, too scared of leeches to put …