Matt Leibel

April 2026 | fiction

How to Go Through the Drive-Thru Car Wash Without Your Car

Leave it back home in the driveway: this is your chance to be purified. Approach the drive-thru entrance on foot, like it’s a cathedral of cleanliness. Shift your body into neutral, and get ready for the ride of your life. As you are splashed and soaped and buffed and waxed, exorcise all the dirt that has accumulated in your bones, your skin, your fingernails, your toes. Clean every last surface of your most desirous thoughts: your mind should shine pristinely, all dreams of chocolate cake or tight-sweatered strangers or public figures you wish to strangle safely sequestered in a supply closet at the back of your brain, a place you can’t access without a skeleton key, or two-factor authentication. Ever since you were young, you’ve dreamed of this moment. Ever since you were strapped in the back seat while your mother—harried, hurried—ran your red Volvo wagon through its glow-up shower after retrieving you up from elementary school. You remember watching the show through the cranked-up window, the mops of rubber hair that slopped wet all over the car’s body calming you somehow. Becoming a vehicle wash voyeur also made you think of your excursions to Lion Country Safari, the sadness of that drive-thru zoo; what, you wondered, did these regal but strangely emaciated beasts make of your huge-wheeled and armored animal as it slowly idled through their artificial, exurban habitat? Now, you’re a grown-ass adult pretending to be a Porsche, and paying $19.95 plus tax for this strangest of baptisms—or at least you’re test-driving the idea as reverie. Hand an extra fiver to the guys who finish hand-drying you, and thank them for their efforts. Well: do you feel cleansed? Are you ready to face the horrors and pleasures of this blemished world with fresh-faced and sudsy energy? Or do you desperately want to get dirty again—to go roll around in a puddle of mud somewhere, like the filthy, sinful creature you are?

 

Matt Leibel

Matt Leibel’s short fiction has appeared in Post Road, Electric Literature, Portland Review, The Normal School, Quarterly West, Socrates on the Beach, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, matchbook, and Wigleaf. His work has also been previously anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2024, Best Microfiction 2025, and Best Microfiction 2026. Find him online at mattleibel.com.

Minjae Kim

April 2026 | visual art

Chromatic Flow 2

 

Minjae Kim

He is a Year 11 student at Saint Paul Educational Institutions in Korea who enjoys capturing everyday moments through a cinematic lens. His work often focuses on ordinary landscapes and daily scenes, transforming them into visually atmospheric images. Beyond photography, he is interested in storytelling and visual narrative processes. He explores how images and moving visuals can convey mood and subtle narratives rather than direct explanations. He has a strong interest in photography, particularly landscape and everyday-life photography, as well as cinematic-style graphic video production. When creating visual work, he tends to gravitate toward abstract expressions rather than strictly representational forms, seeking to evoke emotions and interpretations rather than present literal subjects.

Brian Kim

April 2026 | visual art

Hanbok Stroll

 

Brian Kim

He is a Year 12 student at NLCS Jeju and an emerging young artist with a strong interest in architecture and design. His work reflects a curiosity about how spaces are used, experienced, and improved in everyday life. Often inspired by his school environment, he quietly observes overlooked or problematic areas and reimagines them through practical, creative proposals—such as redesigning the bicycle parking area for improved safety. Influenced by minimalist and functional design, he blends observation with thoughtful planning. He hopes to study architecture or design in the future to enhance urban spaces through innovative and efficient solutions.

Scott Nadelson

April 2026 | fiction

Four-Way Stop

The driver to my right is smiling, gazing at each of us in turn, waving us on. For her, I have no sympathy. But for the one directly across the intersection, a big-eared fellow at least eighty years old, if not closer to eighty-five, who came to a stop before either of us and first had his signal blinking to the right, but now has it blinking to the left, who has inched forward and pumped his brakes at least three times, I feel an overwhelming sense of pity, for within moments I will jam on the gas and swerve around him, honking if necessary, shouting obscenities out my open window, because I am in my forties and overwhelmed with mundane but nagging tasks that await me at work and at home—emails to return, spreadsheets to fill in, bills to pay, plumbers to schedule—boiling over with irritation whenever I’m in a car, having grown up in traffic-choked New Jersey, full of aggressive drivers who’ll cut you off the moment you give them an opening, and now living in mild-mannered Oregon, a place I love for its friendliness and slow pace of life, except when I’m on the road waiting for someone to recognize his obvious right of way. A fourth car approaches from the left, and before it can slow, I’m off.

 

Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson is the author of nine books, most recently the novel Trust Me. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, Five Points, and The Best American Short Stories.

Michael Hower

April 2026 | visual art

RuptureRapture

 

Michael Hower

Michael Hower is a digital photographer and artist based in Central Pennsylvania. Originally trained in drawing and painting, he transitioned to photography over a decade ago and has since exhibited in more than 150 juried exhibitions nationwide, receiving over 50 awards and publications. His work explores systems of control, abandonment, entropy, and the persistence of human voice within constrained spaces. He is the creator of The Infinite Panopticon, an ongoing combinatorial photographic project inspired by literary and architectural systems.