Take an April shower with Issue 88

april2017 coverIt’s spring, and our little garden plot in the Pine Barrens is starting to sprout. Paul Van Dyke supplies the time-traveling turtles, and Marie Marshall reveals the name of the rose. There’s a nice border of moon rocks courtesy of Mariah Montoya, and Michael A. Ferro generates a pleasing atmosphere of claustrophobic paranoia. Chris Beetow sets the mood for outdoor adventures in the cover art.

Grab a trowel, or one of those tiny three-pronged rakes, and join us. There’s plenty of iced tea and earthworms for everyone.

Water it online or weed the .pdf.

Issue 87 Comes Marchin’ In

JDP covert March 2017March is dangerous, a month of meteorological mood swings and violently perforated togas, whose very name is a command to pick up our collective feet and get moving.

The three stories in the pages of our eighty-seventh issue–“We’re Not Dangerous,” “Were It So Easy,” and “Snowball Wants to Go to Outer Space“–are all characterized by this intriguing blend of unpredictability and action. They also share an element of uncertainty, leaving the fates of their characters in question and implicitly inviting us to finish their stories ourselves. Also open to interpretation is this month’s out-of-this-world cover art, “Save Us/Take Me.”

Lion-tame it online or lamb-chop the .pdf.

We needed this . . .

The earth is doomed.

The earth is doomed.

and we thought you might need it, too. We usually shy away from topical pieces, but Joanna Arnow’s “First week after the election” is a powerful exception.

We’re presenting it today, on its own, to spotlight its timeliness, but a large part of what makes it so effective is how it transcends the particulars of a single event and its aftermath and evokes feelings of uncertainty, helplessness, and longing–of needing to understand and be understood, and the frustrations of having those desires thwarted by internal and external forces–in a way that is timeless and profoundly, painfully human.