Got caught staring
past the guy three stools down at the bar
and he says You like it, huh?
flashing his wrist.
Fourteen grand,
and I nod, not wanting to say
I was watching shadows flicker
across the wall behind him,
thinking about human suffering.
Abby Wheeler lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a 2021 finalist for the Great Midwest Writing Contest, and has work published or forthcoming in SWWIM, The Free State Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, In the Roots, is available from Finishing Line Press.
Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Barrow Street, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham lives in Huntington, West Virginia and studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.
Rachel B. Glaser is the author of the novel Paulina & Fran, the short story collection Pee On Water, and the poetry books MOODS and HAIRDO. Glaser studied painting at RISD and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Umass-Amherst. In 2017, she was on Granta’s list of Best of Young American Novelists. Her fiction has been anthologized in New American Stories. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and teaches at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA.
Abby Wheeler lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was a 2021 finalist for the Great Midwest Writing Contest, and has work published or forthcoming in SWWIM, The Free State Review and elsewhere. Her chapbook, In the Roots, is available from Finishing Line Press.
Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Barrow Street, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Florida Review, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham lives in Huntington, West Virginia and studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.
Rachel B. Glaser is the author of the novel Paulina & Fran, the short story collection Pee On Water, and the poetry books MOODS and HAIRDO. Glaser studied painting at RISD and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Umass-Amherst. In 2017, she was on Granta’s list of Best of Young American Novelists. Her fiction has been anthologized in New American Stories. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts and teaches at the Mountainview Low-Residency MFA.
Collin Callahan was born in Illinois. His first collection of poetry, Thunderbird Inn, won the 2022 Minds on Fire Open Prize. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, SLICE, Cream City Review, Hobart, Carve Magazine, Witness, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Collin holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas—where he was awarded the 2017 Walton Family Fellowship in Poetry—and is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Florida State University. He is the recipient of the 2021 Bat City Review Editors’ Prize in poetry.
