“It took months, but finally Henry asked me out on a Bigfoot-hunting date.  I wanted to know what, exactly, one did when looking for a creature that might not exist–but I also wanted to be alone with Henry.  If I was too young to think about love, I certainly was old enough to consider desire. I wanted to be admired, pursued, studied by him. Like Sasquatch, only sexy.”

“because it was made out of heart, and told me that it was a she: You made me to suffer, she said; which I did not know until she said it, and then I did know; It would have been better if you’d made me out of dirt, she said”

In Issue 34.1 we’ve got a lineup of fiction from Mary-Kim Arnold, Claire Harlan Orsi, Christine Friedlander, K vish, Anne Doten and Nick Kocz.

Creative nonfiction in this issue comes from Alicia Catt, Rebecca Huntman, Jill Talbot, Kathleen Blackburn and Melissa Ferrone.

We’ve got poetry for you from John McCarthy, Mark Wagenaar, Carleen Tibbetts, Eric Anderson, Kat Finch, Shivani Mehta, Rick Bursky, Molly Beckwith, Abraham Smith, Lena Moses-Schmitt, Lucy Biederman, Mikko Harvey, Ryan Bollenbach, Catherine Bresner, Chloe Anne Campbell, Kim Stoll, Opal C. McCarthy, Leia Darwish, Suzi F. Garcia, Julie Henson, Alan Michael Parker, Emily Bludworth De Barrios, Colleen Barry, Anders Carlson-Wee, Charlie Clark, Priya Keefe, Lauren Clark, Paul Beilstein, Tarfia Faizullah, Katie Willingham and Carrie Green.

“& gusts into my belly—as though it senses / there is something to bring to life there,”

“I tell him, I only know words, not letters. We’ll switch gears, he says. A new chapter, The Pythagorean Identity. He tells me: an identity is a mathematical fact. Look at the equations. He says: They’re synonyms. I understand sameness, but I want to say: nothing is identical, though oneness is the root of identity. One is the same, a linguistic fact. The book says: Verify the identity. Like it’s all so simple. Like it’s just that easy.”

“this the prologue to our fortune-cookie opera, / the mystifying fog of today conceals the dark-ness of your future, yes, there you are at two / a.m. amtraking the porch, one last stop for”

“and it makes you feel inadequate and threatened and lost so you get on a train that’s headed out of the city singing slow ballads to your disco heartbeat to slow it down but of course there’s no slowing down now the train is only getting faster “

“held my berried index and middle and pulsed / with my bikepeddled speak / My stumbling tongue too / young for her mothertastes: a haste”

In Issue 33.2, we’ve got fiction from Joseph Rein, Jaclyn Dwyer, Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum, Amanda Leahy, David James Poissant and Tessa Mellas.

We’ve got creative nonfiction from Marcia Aldrich, Kristen Radtke, Steve Adams, Sonya Huber and Aubrey Hirsch.

Poetry contributors for this issue are Allison Seay, Sharon Wang, Jen Edwards, Avni Vyas & Anne Barngrover, Cindy Beebe, James Tadd Adcox, JD Scott, Doug Fuller, C Dylan Bassett, Kelly Forsythe, Felicia Zamora, Sandra Meek, Erin Dorney, Kathleen Rooney & Elisa Gabbert, Nathan Parker, Janet Bowdan, Anne Champion, Emily Sketch Haines, Lee Sharkey, Norman Dubie, Kim Lozano, Gordon Osing, Chris Emslie,  Wendy Xu, Carl Phillips and Kwame Dawes.

“Not being dead is neither worst nor best case scenario / It is just regular like you would see a beautiful orange chicken / I have three primary categories for things that happen / The first being AMAZING”

“The light was a specific kind / as a sky-field of stars without a moon”

“But it’s not enough to learn to float. Floating doesn’t get you where you want to be. You have to swim too. The shape of the lake is a giant bowl. There are no shallows. The Wallenpaupack is sixty feet at the deepest point, which doesn’t sound like much, but it feels much farther when you’re swimming up and not over, fighting the pressure like a kitten running with a strip of masking tape across its back.”

In Issue 33.1, we’ve got an interview with Randall Kenan, author of Only The Dead Know Chapel Hill, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, and A Visitation of Spirits, among others.

Our fiction offerings include work by Darren Morris, D.J. Thielke, Lindsey Drager, Dylan Brie Ducey, and Devin Murphy.

We’ve also got creative nonfiction from Marilyn Abildskov, Andrew Johnson, Rachel Riederer, Joey Franklin, and Jillian Weiss.

“ Nothing. Frozen shut. Then one day, a baby appeared in the ice, followed by another. No one could think of any missing children, but soon the lake was littered with infants.”

This issue, we’ve got an interview on story craft and character development with the always spectacular Bobbie Ann Mason. We’re also serving up incredible poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction from Roxane Gay, Michael Croley, Nicholas Wong, Christine Stewart, Meg Cowen, Ray McManus, Raymond Fleischmann, Christopher Kempf, Eireann Lorsung, David Roderick, Daniel Browne, William Lusk Coppage, Jax Peters Lowell, Derek Palacio, Susan Gubernat, John Vanderslice, Allison Campbell, Maria Rapoport, Traci Brimhall, Charlotte Boulay, James Crizer, Bryce Emley, Mark Jay Brewin, Jr., Helen Phillips, Brad Henderson, Harold Whit Williams, Ira Sukrungruang, Elizabeth O’Brien, Anthony Opal, Tim Hayes, Sydney Lea, and Tory Adkisson. We’re also pleased to bring you the winning entries from the University of New Orleans Creative Contest, as judged by the editorial staff of The Pinch, including pieces by Kiki Whang, Jill Frischhertz, and Anne Royan.

Thin, vinegar-sauce tang calls us / to our seats like somnambulists. / Our fever-dreams are burnt ends, / collard greens, sliced white bread.”

“promising herself—next time—a thimble, as the blood / ran down into a starched cuff. Mostly,”

“I juggle them constellating a colony”

Featuring interviews with Marge Piercy and Richard Tillinghast. Fiction and poetry by our wonderful Literary Award winners: Stu Dearnley, Judith Edelman, Claudine R. Moreau and John Sibley Williams. We also have incredible poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction from Steve Adams, Will Boast, Gaylord Brewer, John F. Buckley and Martin Ott, Josh Dorman, Chris Fink, Mary Flanagan, Amy Fraser, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Carrie Green, Todd Hearon, Darren Jackson, Jaybo, Jason M. Jones, Jason Koo, Anna Leahy, Scott Nadelson, Alison Pelegrin, Jennifer Perrine, Alison Prine, Shelley Puhak, Jennifer Richter, Alex Roulette, Laurie Sewall, Lee Sharkey, and Matthew Vollmer.

“It bothers me to no end that patience, like all virtues, takes time to cultivate. So, to pass the time, I read and hope to learn something. I read about Galileo. “