Skeletal
micro series
poetry
fauna sounding flute
Adam Jon Miller's poems were included in The Louisville Review, Yalobusha Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, The William & Mary Review, OxMag, and elsewhere. A selection of Adam's work has been translated into Chinese. Adam is a poetry reader at Thimble Literary Magazine. He authors the Substack newsletter WORDINGHOUSE. Visit him anytime at www.adamjonmiller.com and follow him @im.adam.miller.
Double Headstone Contrapuntal
Emily M Goldsmith (they/them) is a queer Louisiana Creole poet and writer. They are an Instructor of English at Louisiana State University. Emily received their PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi. Their creative work can be found in Midway Journal, Moist Poetry Journal, Penn Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere.
fiction
Bone Fishing
We went bone fishing in the Lake of Shining Light. Soon, there was enough to build a sister. She
was smooth as a dragon’s pearl. Sister, we cried, teach us how to die. But our bone sister simply
laughed, teeth chattering like cicada hums in the waning summer.
Elena Zhang is a Chinese American writer and mother living in Chicago. Her work can be found in HAD, The Citron Review, and Flash Frog, among other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and was selected for Best Microfiction 2024 and 2025.
Coven of the Spark
A rock fell onto another rock and a spark happened. Later, Demetri struck two rocks together and
the spark happened. The villagers called it Demetrius’s Spark. Then Demetri made the spark do
wild things like burn dinosaur blood so metal could fly. Then Demetri died, but the villagers’
tears couldn’t keep the rocks from sparking.
The sparks burned everything in the village except the witches, watching from safe, mystical
distances. When the last of the villagers died, the witches came out from their secret dimensions
to rechurn the earth. They planted skeletons left behind by the over-sparked humans, digging
them deep into the dirt. Then the coven performed plays and poems around the skeletons until
the soil began to sing, the air unclenched its heat, and the water relaxed its posture.
The witches would keep a closer eye on which human would witness the next, first spark.
Bobby Crace teaches creative writing and ghostwrites. He is the Managing Editor of The Southampton Review and Fiction Editor of Moonlighting by Lit Pub. You can find his work in The Brooklyn Rail, Eclectica, Chicago Story Press, Trash Cat Lit, Sleepingfish, The Under Review, Mayday, and other journals.
It Happened at Midnight
...when the deer skull submerged in dried patches of forest clay, rose, and every bone wriggled
itself to sentience, hoof-less stubbled claws fracturing the hardened dirt, as the beast crawled out
of a nameless grave. Only a minute ago my brother Chase and I were wild children running through
the woods, trying to forget about the world for an hour. Chase’s jaw dropped in unison with mine,
his hands instantly let go of the stick he wouldn’t stop poking the eyeholes with, only to have this
fleshless ghost skulking and pacing around our stillness. We can now feel our knees buckling,
kneeling to the ground, we collapse, as the this newly formed creature decides to graze in an area
where grass is sparse, I now know, there’s only two items on this creature’s menu, and it’s not the
dew-soaked grass beneath our feet.
J.B. Stone (he/they) is a Neurodivergent/Autistic teaching artist, spoken word poet, writer, playwright, and critic from Brooklyn, NY now residing in Buffalo, NY. They serve as Founding EIC/Reviews Editor at Variety Pack and reads flash fiction for Split Lip Magazine. Nominated for both the Best of the Net, and the Best Small Fictions, J.B.’s prose has appeared in, The McNeese Review, The Citron Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Hex Literary, among other spaces. His micro, “Larry, The Morganucodon” was also shortlisted in CRAFT’s Inaugural Character Sketch Challenge. They also were recently a semifinalist in Alien Buddha Press's House of Horrors Showdown.
Bone Thread
Nonna’s hands were more bone than flesh, skin stretched thin as parchment. When she
sewed, the needle seemed an extension of her fingers, darting with skeletal precision,
thread pulling tight like sinew. I watched from the floor, certain that if I looked too
closely, I’d see the bones themselves guiding the cloth.
She whispered to the fabric as she worked, words I could never catch, only feel in the
air. Incantations, maybe, or names of women long buried. Each stitch tightened not just
the hem but the lineage, binding me to something I didn’t yet understand.
When the dress was done, she draped it over my shoulders. For a moment, it was
heavy, as if every ancestor pressed their bones against mine. I shivered, and Nonna
smiled with hollow eyes. “It fits,” she said, though I wasn’t sure she meant the dress.
Mia Baldanzi Germain was born in the U.S. to a Tuscan mother from Pisa and a father of Italian descent from Firenze. Raised speaking only Italian, in school she developed a deep curiosity for language that led to a BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, professional coursework at Harvard Business School, and a career in creative advertising. Her work explores heritage, grief, and magic with lyricism and depth.