1. It’s the end of 2022. Are you . . .
    A) Relieved. It was touch-and-go there for a while. Whew.
    B) Elated. We made it, yo! High-five!
    C) Depressed. Something’s always ending.
    D) Indifferent. Solar cycles do not define us.
    E) Confused. Why do I feel like I’m being tested?
  2. Why do you read literary journals?
    A) To keep abreast of contemporary authors and trends.
    B) It’s where I get the real news.
    C) To laugh. To cry. To play emotional roulette.
    D) So I can say I read them first.
    E) A literary what now?
  3. Collectively, these twenty-three works remind you . . .
    A) What it’s like to walk the shore at dawn.
    B) That the only life is change.
    C) There’s somebody I need to call.
    D) There’s somebody whose call I will not answer.
    E) That it’s not too late.

***

Ethan Altshul: “For My Brother Laying Next to Me in Bed” “Learning to Fish in a Puddle on 5th Ave.”

Ken Anderson: “Hot and Cold” and “Death Watch”

Isabelle B.L. : “The Black Shawl”

Frank Carellini: “rehabilitating birds of prey,” “Search Engine Meditations,” and “floodgate: memory.”

Absalom Cortes: “Start” and “Trans Missive”

Darren Demaree: “Emily as the Strangeness Gifts Us an Undoing” and “Emily as the Fire”

Tamiko Dooley: “Quicksand” and “Anagram”

December Ellis: “Boys” and “something not a woman”

LeAnne Hunt: “Fawning,” “She Lives in the Depths of My Love” and “Call Me Back”

Emily Jahn: “Gestalt,” “Meteorology,” and “Snow globe”

Peter Mladinic: “The Chains that Kept Me from Reaching You”