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Issue 116

October 15, 2025 · 29 pieces

Cover of Issue 116Buy the print issue →

Eileen Vorbach Collins

October 2025 | nonfiction

Nonfiction · Issue 116Chasing LasersThe cat will sit on my desk and help me write stories about love. About loss. About a cat who will claw up the furniture, but I won’t give a damn because she will make biscuits on my poofy belly and never suggest I work on strengthening my core. I know her, this orange kitten, the one I dream about. I belong to her as she belongs to me. It feels like love, but the kitten isn’t real. It’s been a few months since our old dog, Sugar, died. The kitten will purr away the ringing in my ears. The kitten will love me back.

MFC Feeley

October 2025 | nonfiction

Nonfiction · Issue 116TransferLong crooked stem, blunt thorns, deep red, tight center, black ridging outer petals that curled back—I forget how I acquired the rose. People were always giving me flowers, but I bought them, too. I could guess a bouquet’s price in any neighborhood, or vased on someone’s shelf, with stunning accuracy. I picked up many a five that way, guessing to the penny, knowing that if I bet more I’d feel too guilty to take the money. I was waiting to transfer at the 168th street station, a dank cavern sepia-ed in failing light and staling urine. It took anywhere from five to one hundred fifty—but usually forty—minutes for the train to come. I read Moby Dick and War and Peace on the subway, but that night I had Beloved. When I felt nervous I took a cab, reasoning that if I got attacked I’d kick myself if I’d ignored my instincts, but it was a long way to Inwood. Cab drivers always tried to take the bridge, because they didn’t believe Manhattan went up that high; I’d have to fight to keep them on the Henry Hudson—a repeating course in assertion. I was nineteen. Some drivers asked me out, some confessed that they were on drugs, one muttered over and over that I was as tender as a young brussel sprout, but we were above 176th, and I was scared to make him pull over and let me out on the dark un-sidewalked thoroughfare — there was no riverwalk then—so if I felt OK, I’d save the twenty dollars. I slipped the rose into the triangles of space between the crooked elbows and concave chest of a long thin homeless man, hugging himself as he slept it off on a bench, then chose a place to stand where I’d see anyone approaching (I wasn’t dressed for the walk of shame and thought it was obvious that I was waitress coming home with a wad of cash and wanted to be ready) and watch the rats emerge from the tracks, the third rail, the garbage, the puddles, and the chunked-out walls exactly as they emerged if you were hallucinating them coming down from acid or X while I waited and read. Two chattering women crossed the platform. I did not fear them; I saved my fear for men. They looked dressed for church or a baby shower—vinyl pumps with ankle-wobbling heels, pastel polyester dresses with deep ruffled necklines. Tiny hats. Stiff curls with banded grooves where bobby pins had recently secured plastic rollers. The bar closed at four and it took until five to get out of there, and I’d made it this far from the village, the women were probably headed to an early service. They were loud and bright, and I watched them without turning my head. One slipped the rose out, like a Pick Up Stick, or a Kerplunk skewer, without waking the sleeper, but her friend said, “that’s not for you” and made her put it back.

Alice Lowe

October 2025 | nonfiction

Nonfiction · Issue 116Last DanceTake politicians, for example. Some know when to bow out gracefully; others hang on doggedly, even after their health, energy, and mental acuity have begun to compromise their effectiveness. (Sorry, Joe, that includes you.) The time of reckoning seems to hover around the age of 80. Some still claim good health and all their marbles and see no reason not to keep going. Bernie at 83 and Nancy at 85—still fighting the good fight. Others may yearn for the calm and quiet of private life, be ready to retire from the rat race.

Meggie Royer

October 2025 | fiction, Pushcart nominee

Fiction · Issue 116CrawlspaceVeronica opened the paper bag of tomatoes, inhaling their earthy scent. Big Rainbow, Early Girl, Jubilee. Her favorite, heirlooms, were stacked at the bottom. They always had such beautiful cross-sections. Outside the window, a trail of birdseed stretched to the banks of the creek, raspberries clustered in rows along the hill. A thunderstorm was building at the horizon, clouds so dark she estimated ten more minutes before the rain fell.
Burningword

Burningword Literary Journal publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction and visual art three times a year, in January, April and October, on the web and in print. Established 2001.

ISSN 2161-8992 (print) · ISSN 2157-7366 (online)

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