49.1, Fall 2025

CONTENTS

7               Editor’s Note

FICTION

8               Devon Halliday / In the Afterwards

30            Jessica Hollander / Paper Dolls of the Homestead Era

52            Molly Giles / The Year the Kids Divorced Us

60            Siamak Vossoughi / A Gun is a Cowardly Thing

65            Mary Grimm/ War and Peas / Water Babies / Charmed

84            Dana Jean Rider / The Murk

128         Eugene Radice / The Wall

POETRY

18            Paige Passantino / Sugar Baby Sonnet / Self Portrait as The

Kidney Stone That Almost Killed My Sister / Saint Michael and the

Dragon

26            Alex Dodt / Goblin Girl Summer

27            Jackie Chicalese / Summer, 1999

28            Brandi George / your riddles scratch

29            Susan Nguyen / Becoming Myth

44            Benjamin Faro / Variations on Folded Sonnet #10

46            Ashia Ajani / Which Way Western Man / Unwritten

48            Kate Partridge / Thinning the Peaches

56            Michael Bazzett / Holding a Mirror / Yes, And

59            Claire Zhou / Conversation with a Telemarketer

62            Brandon Krieg/ Rest Area, Alone

63            Dana Alsamsam/ My people are not afraid of dying

64            Christine Byrne / Burying Zebras

68            Lizzie Hutton / History of Art (Eva Hesse, 1964)

69            Daniel Brennan / Global Warfare Refrain

70            Marina Greenfeld/ In-service Training

79            Emily Adams-Aucoin / Nolo Contendere

80            Michelle Orsi / Monstera Deliciosa

81            Sara Femenella / The Nothing That Comes After

82            Elly Bookman / Another Century / Kansas

98            Kate Garcia / The poem is heat-treated is tempered glass / I am

Convinced I Will Die a Violent Death / (Bartending as a Family

Matter)

103         David Moolten / The Mirror in Snow White

107         Heather Gluck / Ode to My IUD

108         Elizabeth Muscari / River Body

109         Michael M. Weinstein / Stroad

124         Gabrielle Frahm-Claffey / Weeding Grapevines / Mistranslation

126         Grant Chemidlin / Rain on the Fourth / On the Phone

NONFICTION

24            Ghazala Datoo O’Keefe / This Is About the Cake

110         Lizzie Lawson / How to Keep Guys Interested

COMICS

72           Sam Risak / Waiting for the Punchline

104         Josie Levin / Fishing

146         Contributors’ Notes