Written and Read

"A Girl Called Tomorrow," originally published in reference mollusk in January of 2026. "With the new name, she would be heartless, strong, angry, beautiful, young forever, temperamental, effortlessly cool. With the new name, she would be anything she wanted."

Discussion with Dale Hall and Charlie Hope-D'Anieri about the best books we read in 2024.

Two original pieces of flash fiction by Alex Carolan - "Lolita" and "Pink Pigeon" - originally published in Pom Pom Lit and Pinch, respectively.

"My Angel," original and unpublished. "I wake up beside an angel. Every morning, she plants a kiss on my lips. And then I get up to make coffee and feed the cat."

Unpublished and original.

An original poem.

"Trimbell's Complaint," original and unpublished. " On October 2nd, 2029, at 7:42 PM PST, the Basketville sheriff department received a call from Mr. Trimbell’s neighbor, Mrs. Petunia Foxwood, stating that she heard strange loud noises coming from Mr. Trimbell’s backyard, including some yelling and profanity."

"Even Me," original and unpublished. " As long as I can remember, I have been alone."

One original poem: "The Little Secret"

"Dog Won't Hunt," original and unpublished. " Barry didn’t know how to refuse the flowers so he accepted them bashfully and left without saying thank you or goodbye."

Krishna Sharma reads three original poems.

"Sunday Morning," original and unpublished. "For the first time that day, I felt sad, for it seemed to me that the place where someone died should be special or noteworthy in some way and yet, for all my riding up and down the tow path, I didn’t see anything besides a few pieces of garbage and a family of deer on the opposite bank and none of it seemed special to me."

Marcus Changed talks poetry and reads several original poems.

"Follow Her," original and unpublished. "My fear is unformed molten steel. It’s a knife, a jet engine, a crutch, whatever I need whenever I need it."

"The Simulator" is an original one-act play. Characters Ben: Nels Challinor Aliss: Alexandra Duprey

"Loneliness," original and unpublished. "His attempts to soothe her, his soft cooing words, his very presence, these only made her angrier and sadder. This time, he lies very still, looking at his long unbitten fingernails and counting the digits to ten."

Four original micropoems, unpublished.

"Candlemaker," previously unpublished. "Our purpose, if we have one beyond the abilities we perform effortlessly thousands of times per day, is ethereal and divine. It is related to survival and beauty and the interrelatedness of all things. This is a fact that whoever wrote the employee handbook does not understand."

Dan Foley reads three original poems.

One original poem: "Gravity's Mistake"

"Alarm," previously unpublished. "They both feel lucky to have someone who cares enough about them to make sure that they are drinking enough water."

"Walking to the Number 61," previously unpublished. " Ian always frames his emails to colleagues in the passive voice. It’s a habit he picked up from his father, a librarian, who believed that if you did your job well, people wouldn’t notice, and if you did your job very well, people wouldn’t even know that your job exists."

One original poem: "Mastery"

Singer-songwriter DAIN describes his songwriting process and how he wrote "Tinman." DAIN is a Seattle based singer-songwriter / indie pop artist with an emphasis on storytelling in his lyrics. His music can be found here: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5PdbAN4rPvek632pFfpVKJ?si=XpTJm_m2Tk6Kp0FlaBLzBA Bandcamp: https://dainweisner.bandcamp.com/album/sun-feels-good

"A Tribe of Genies," previously unpublished. “Packets of cigarettes and boxes of sweets were passed round, and the bedouin women sang and danced, the night and the desert resounding with the echoes of a great feast, as though we were some tribe of genies.” -  Tayeb Salih