Theme #4: “Gastronomy”
Three Poems
Poetry by Saima Afreen
“There’s no midnight hour in a pink / drink. It opens its atoms in a slow / dance from the mouth of the carafe / to the edge of your lips…”
Five Poems
Poetry by Kathryn Reese
“You are immersed in the folding of cling wrap…and the taste of chocolate cake egg mayonnaise licked from your finger.”
Imagining a Sandwich
Poetry by Wes Civilz
“In my mind, / Blending the several flavors till they pop / A pearl of dopamine inside my skull / And flood my brainpan…”
Ten Cents Cheaper than Spam
Creative Nonfiction by Kevin Brown
“Treet was difficult to describe. Canned meat, sure, but also my 70s suburban satisfaction. Satiation, even.”
As a child, mother fed me sugar lemon snaps
Poetry by Kristy Snedden
“Trees of hard polished lemons / potted in the front room. / Yellow fruits sprouted like pale rocks coaxed by her slick green thumb.”
Flux Lit: 1 Poem and 1 Story
by Adrian Kresnak
“Just out of arms reach, one of the other participants was pulling some things out of her bag. It looked like a food storage container. The participant opened it; a stack of pancakes remained perfectly piled inside.”
Courtship at the Pizza Giant
Fiction by Paul Lewellan
“‘By the time you turned sixteen, you’d been arrested for breaking and entering, vandalism, simple assault, graffiti, truancy, drug possession, petty larceny, underage drinking, joy riding, and shoplifting.’
‘I keep busy.’”
Things Our Mother Made Us Eat
Fiction by Andrew Careaga
“Friday night was trash-bean soup night, so named by my father for our mother’s end-of-week concoction…Despite its name, the soup was bearable.”
Goodbyes Are Often Hard to Swallow
Micro-Fiction by Traci Adams
“My stomach packed her bags, and we didn’t even have a chance to talk about it. I don’t blame her. I would run away too if I had suffered that kind of neglect. “It was abuse!” she called over her shoulder.”
Four Poems
by Damon Hubbs
“I won’t write a memoir / or autofiction or a fictional memoir / that would be easy pudding / & I want to bring Haschich Fudge / to the Ladies’ Bridge Club & / go skinny dipping in the River Kwai…”
Rice Pudding - A Sweet Treat
Poetry by Sreelekha Chatterjee
“Garnish with rose petals, / like a tree bed decorated with / flowers, / witnessing a familiar joy.”
The Things My Father Used to Eat
Fiction by Andrew Careaga
“And now, I think, perhaps that was why he ate those strange organs with such vigor. Perhaps they were some curandero’s remedy, some potion, some magic to inoculate him from the ailments that had historically plagued his family. Ailments of kidneys, livers and matters of the heart.”
Sustanance - A to Z
Creative Nonfiction by Susan Knox
“A perfect risotto makes me incredibly happy. I don’t know why. I only know it is so.”
