Hello my autumnal ghoulies and goblins,

I am very tired this week, but please enjoy this gorgeous issue, selected by guest editor Eleanor Ball. We’ll be back with Issue 13.5 next week!

Sleepily and spookily,
Kym
The Braag
Carmen et Error

Issue 13.0

Rodeo Stories My Ex-Stepdad Told Me
by Eliot S. Ku 

Before he died, he gave me a .22 caliber revolver assembled from things found in nature, assured me that it worked as good as any, with a handle fashioned from a piece of driftwood—the one and only time he’d seen the ocean, a desolate place with not much to do, he thought. The chamber, which could hold just a single bullet, was the skull of a mouse he’d rescued from stray cats, the only kind of true friend he made in life. The barrel was the long bone of a coyote, hollowed of its marrow and trabecula, discovered in the carved-out wagon ruts of the Old Spanish Trail during the lavender quiet just after sundown. The hammer was a human molar the color of a day that couldn’t decide if it was going to rain, origins unknown, and the trigger the curled fingernail of a barrel cactus spine. There was no safety mechanism, in keeping with the way he’d lived. The bullet he said I’d have to buy from the soda fountain, where they also sold willow bark and laudanum and lime soda ice cream floats, all the things one should need to polish off the wan dust of days.

Once again, I find myself on the other side of my tomb
by Shannon Marzella

Liminal Crush Report
by Isabel Rhoten

We speed into spirals. We enjoy forming triangles: She, I, and an arbitrary third. We out-fickle the squares. She slips my outside face right off. In the language of my survival, her name translates to breathe. She speaks herself in riddles. She speaks to children like an agent of youth. I maintain my belief that she is all gut, all legend, all ghost. I feel her when she pulls. I will let it go. My words take priority. My life is a spell. I know not what to do but how I must do it: Curiosity, Strange, Bold, Abundant, Dancing. She gets it. She kind of does as I do. I kind of do as she does. We borrow coats, tactics, corners of thought. We angle ourselves perpendicular. In every room she enters, she radiates. Her energy is not an illusion. She does not show face when she does not want to. I have not seen her in fourteen months. Time is on her side. She wishes for nothing. Her birthday candles stand idly in the cake. She is a universe with legs. I am all hands, just kneading her space.

If You Die First
by Daniel Roop

save me a seat. Ignore Valentino. Tell him
this star is taken, that I’ll be coming soon.
Tell him that I’m 6’8”. That I’m the only
Ultimate Fighting Champion disqualified
for excessive bloodletting. Tell him
whatever you have to. And dress warm.
Remember how you even had to take jackets to movie theaters.
If you die first, my ribcage will be an empty dumpster,
my heart a starving kitten rummaging for scraps.
I’ll be lonelier than a condemned orphanage.
I’ll be Charlie Parker’s saxophone calling
Charlie Parker’s last breath back.
My past will be a fireworks display from the top
of a ferris wheel. My past will be two bodies
curving into each other like parentheses.
My present will be a damp dishtowel.
My future will be my birth certificate
burning inside a wood stove.
Have I mentioned my heart? It will be the moan
Chewbacca moaned when they took Han Solo away.
It will be a 499-piece puzzle, a strawberry
ice cream cone melting in the Dollywood parking lot.
If you die first, I’ll sleep on the couch every night,
pretending we’ve had an argument and you’re only
eleven steps away. In the morning, I’ll make coffee
and say, Let’s never sleep apart again.
If you die first, leave a trail of soybeans—I’ll
recognize you among the breadcrumbs.
I’ll scoop them up like pirate gold and come running.
When I see you again, for the first time,
my heart will turn into your birthstone.
I’ll go down on one knee and present it.
I’ll ask you all over again.

Eliot S. Ku is a physician who lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children. His writing has appeared in Whiskey Tit, Maudlin House, Carmen et Error, HAD, and Bending Genres, among other places. You can read more at www.eliotsku.com

Shannon Marzella-Kearns holds an MFA in Poetry from Western Connecticut State University. Her young adult novel, Girl in Shadows, was published by Nymeria Publishing in 2021, and her poetry has been published in several journals and anthologies including Sky Island Journal, Stonecoast Review, Ghost City Review, White Stag Publishing’s Spirit anthology, and Mulberry Literary. Her first poetry collection, The Uterus is an Impossible Forest, is forthcoming from Raw Dog Screaming Press in August 2025. You can connect with her on Instagram @shannon_mk_writer or at shannonmkearns.com. 

Isabel Rhoten is a D.C.-based creative. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chartium Magazine, Nowhere Girl Collective, and RHIZOME MAG. For more: isabelrhoten.com.

Daniel Roop is a member of the HWA and SFPA. His speculative work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Apex Magazine, Cast of Wonders, Flash Fiction Online, Cosmic Horror Monthly, and others. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his work in Will Work for Peace from Zeropanik Press. He taught at the University of Tennessee’s Young Writers’ Workshop for two decades, and finished in the top 10 at the National Poetry Slam three consecutive times. He is a seventh generation East Tennessean, and his favorite superhero is Kitty Pryde.

This issue was guest-edited by Eleanor Ball. Eleanor is a librarian and assistant professor at the University of Northern Iowa. She was a 2025 Junior Fellow at the Library of Congress. Her poetry and essays have been featured in Barnstorm, Orion’s Belt, Small Wonders, Stone Circle Review, Yalobusha Review, and elsewhere.