Avital Gad-Cykman

January 2026 | fiction

Clockwise

Quite late into my pregnancy, the day I eventually did pregnancy tests and all three came out positive (Surprise! I’m here!), my husband said he’d always yearned to be a father, (Have I developed something new? These are voices outside!), a statement of desired fatherhood that came as a shock, or, let’s say, a seven-degree alarm on a scale of zero to ten, (Water, water, wateeerrrr, swimming in a blister) because my husband used to say it’s crazy to bring a baby to this world, and I believed  he understood my point and accepted my decision, though he always beamed at babies and said to fathers they were lucky, so I guess  (she says: I will change diapers, will hear a baby cry, will be like my tired girl friends), his huge capacity of devotion had been seeking a route, which didn’t pass solely through me, (Here I am! Feel me. I’ll kick a little, see? Again! Again! Happy?), or maybe not at all through me or anyone, yet, because in his youth, my husband credited people with more generosity than they actually had, lost his family in a war and that pain squandered his capacity for love (A head against my kicking leg. Father! A hand over my head. Mother!) or so he thought, but his love for our child grew high and bright like wheat in the following months, and after all he did trust my contribution to his child, and this grew into a plant of love between us too, and I was afraid to lose it when the baby came out, so I wanted to turn the clock back (something’s wrong, what’s wrong, I’ll see you soon, Mother, Father, I promise! I’ll be yours, I want out.), but when the baby was born, and light I didn’t know existed within me burst out too, there we were, the three of us, and the clock, for all I cared, could go on and never stop.

 

Avital Gad-Cykman

Avital Gad-Cykman is the author of the story collections Light Reflection Over Blues (Ravenna Press) and Life In, Life Out (Matter Press). She is the winner of Margaret Atwood Studies Magazine Prize and The Hawthorne Citation Short Story Contest. Her stories appear in The Dr. Eckleburg Review, Iron Horse Review, Prairie Schooner, Ambit, McSweeney’s Quarterly, and Michigan Quarterly, among others. They have been included twice in Best Short Fictions, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International anthology, and Best Microfiction 2025. She lives in Brazil and holds a PhD in English Literature, focused on minorities, gender, and trauma.

 

Francine Witte

January 2026 | fiction

Test

This is a test. A heartbeat test. A bloodbeat test. My doctor tells me I’m going to die. This is certain. I want to tell the doctor it’s OK

My doctor is a quack. Quick homemade remedies — everything to cure halitosis and eczema. You can’t leave his office without buying.

****

My husband is in love with another woman. This is not a test. My heartbeat knows it.  My bloodbeat knows it. My husband is going to leave me. This is certain I want to tell my husband it’s OK

My husband is a jerk. Quick homemade remedies of stink flowers and empty promises. You can’t leave an argument without buying.

***

I’m heading into loveless now and lifeless now. I am almost not a patient I am almost not a wife. There is no test for this, I just know it. There is nothing I can buy that will change anything. I want to tell myself it’s OK.

Francine Witte

Francine Witte is a flash fiction writer and poet, and the author of the flash collection RADIO WATER. Her newest poetry book, Some Distant Pin of Light, has just been published by Cervena Barva Press. Her work has been widely published, and she is a recent recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City. Please visit her website francinewitte.com. She can be found on social media @francinewitte.

Lizbeth Bárcena

January 2026 | poetry

Arid Land Thermophilia

love for the desert heat / a cautionary affair

 

I don’t feel overjoyed or conceited

to hear people bitch about heat

in a hot place, in late May, amid

what’s befalling the Earth– It’s two

 

degrees more– think less clothing,

more rubbing of UV protection, but

I’m stuck in a freezer, wearing a down

jacket in June, desiring the burn on

 

my face, arms, and back, a fiery love bite

on my nape, that ectotherm craving

that sensual boil that gets cramped in July

when the awful AC, the culprit that causes

 

greenhouse gases, makes me disdain my

thermophilic bent, knowing the price

to the thermotolerant: the Chuckwalla

Fringe-toad lizards, tortoise, roadrunners

 

hawks, bighorn, coyotes, and xerophytes

could all vanish in August’s peak hour behind

sweltering sand and stone. One degree more

could be that upheaval that stops me from

 

elating on the hot wall on my skin, heat

emanating from the floors, an endless heat sink

I don’t hate the amorous stink of my Staphylococcus

hominis, thriving in my armpits

 

Lizbeth Bárcena

Lizbeth Bárcena is a writer and naturalist, dedicated to bringing awareness of the wonders and fragility of nature through writing. She’s currently pursuing an MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University. A Semi-Finalist for the 2024 North American Review Terry Tempest Williams Creative Nonfiction Contest and recipient of the Mari Sandoz Emerging Writer Scholarship, her work was recently published in the El Portal Literary Journal Spring 2025.

Tetman Callis

January 2026 | visual art

New Mexico 1989, Tetman Callis

New Mexico 1989

 

Tetman Callis

Tetman Callis is a writer and artist who lives in Chicago. His stories have been published in a variety of literary venues, most recently including BULL, Tahoma Literary Review, Elm Leaves Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Running Wild Press: Short Story Anthology Vol. 7, and Propagule. He is the author of the memoir, High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico (Outpost 19, 2012), and the children’s book, Franny & Toby (Silky Oak Press, 2015). His photographs have previously appeared in Burningword Literary Journal. He can be found online at https://tetmancallis.substack.com.

June Chua

January 2026 | poetry

Fever Dream

You are about 7, skinny, sheathed in a flaxen knit dress. Margarine yellow. You are

persuaded by the son of your godmother, your namesake, to climb through a large,

wooden fence into a meadow. It’s late June, your month. You have only been on this new

continent for two months. You have some firsts. Your first chocolate milkshake. Its icy

chunks making your stomach turn. The ginormous American burger crowned with a tile of

orange cheese and onions. You are only able to chomp through about five times before the

meat monster appropriates your stomach and now lives there rent free. The burger is

topped with something you’ve never had, relish. But you do not. You help your godmother

catch beefy slugs in the garden. Everything here is super-sized. You feel dwarfed by it all,

the XXXTRA-Largeness of the houses, the roads, the trucks. The size of your parents’

dream.

 

You and your new friend stroll into a soft, lemony hue of a meadow. The air is toasty, the

flavor of summer tasting you. You are wary of wandering too far. This American boy is

leading the way. You have faith. Until…you see the bull. Why is this giant beast standing in

your fever dream? It gallops like the inevitable future that is racing towards you.

The boy grabs your hand. The air zoomed, the present zooms, the future will zoom.

You reach the fence again. He climbs through but you struggle with your little legs, and

your dress becomes snagged! th-thump-th-thump-th-thump goes your heart thump-thump-thump go the

hooves rumble-rumble goes your gut. Between safety and risk.

Your dress is set free, by you or by him? You both keep running, laughing. Jubilant.

You are never released. The bull remains. An insatiable meat monster.

 

June Chua

June Chua used to read stories aloud to her little sister when their family lived in Borneo, Malaysia. Eventually, they moved to the Canadian prairies, first living in a trailer! This passion for the written word has led to a 25-year career in journalism, filmmaking, and communications, including work as a CBC News reporter and the writing of articles for newspapers and magazines. Her works have appeared in Back Where I Came From, The Best of Rabble, Strangers in the Mirror, poco. lit, Palisades Review, Tough Poets, Chatelaine, Canadian Living, and The Globe & Mail. She resides in Berlin and is working on a prose and poem collection supported by a Canadian literary grant. See: junechua.com or @re.juneration