GASTROPODA

I kick my legs in the shopping cart until Mom hands me a warm cookie from the bakery. The weekly trip to the grocery store means crinkly...

Found, flaccid, amongst my greens, I scooped you on the shovel’s tip and lobbed you over the wall. Repulsive as a toddler with a snotty...

The open road starts with a gifted car, decorative flowers spray-painted in a fluorescent-bright parking lot. A girl laughs as drips run...

The raindrop has dived 6500 feet. His destination—a diseased mango leaf. The raindrop does not dwell on wasted grandiose; he knows his...

I love the bench’s broken legs, the white bone of metal underneath the red paint. Here is an elegant decline into new spring weeds, into...

Country garden mosquitos skate over decay translucent greens marble murky concrete surfaces end papering the end betraying stagnant mud...

I don’t feel well, my mother says. She looks past the edge of the cliff where the sea would meet the sky, if there was a sea anymore. But...

Jean Velasco is a writer, EFL teacher, and translator from Naarm (Melbourne). Her work has appeared in Kill Your Darlings, Overland,...

October Ocean I don’t get out of bed until I become so sick of researching jellyfish stings that the navy comforter starts to feel like a...

I leap from the edge of the marble quarry. Through the woodsmoke I fall; through the sea of stars beyond your eyes; through the rain as I...

The summer air is hot and damp as the sun disappears behind the faded fence posts in the shadows of the backyard. I revel in the sounds:...

versus/verse endings / beginnings / no things / all things / losing weight / losing mass / losing being / finding your feet / finding the...

If you ask a person without generalized anxiety disorder how they plan for a music festival, they say things like: “Wear layers in case...

HONEYMOON everything smells like honeysuckle at the wedding and I think what it must be to love like leaving a tab open or a thrown...

Those curious eyes. Their scrutiny. The gaze follows me as I walk to my desk. The teacher announces my arrival. The new girl in fifth...

The black iris dribbling down the fencepost. Don’t lie to me—I know you’ve seen it, too, soft moss & wet carpet of autumnal blood. Don’t...

Her skin was gray, hidden among the shallow water and rocks. Its smooth texture slid underneath the grains of sand, swimming with each...

the birds, the birds for aster, what i think of around you – wings rushing up in a massive unfolding, reshaping. we all relearn as adults...

They appeared in kaleidoscope colors, in the form of Siamese fighting fish, gliding about the room, performing graceful pirouettes. She’d...

without my therapist telling me to do so i realized that this whole “being sad and borderline suicidal and hopelessly in love” thing was...