By Abby Higgs

The Queen’s Review: “Out of Step” by Anthony Moll

/ Tyler Mendelsohn / Reviews
Moll objected to a soldier’s use of the word “faggot.” And once a tussle erupted, he says the fight was “the gayest thing I had ever seen.”

Review of Andrea Gibson’s Take Me With You

/ Ann Marie Brokmeier / Reviews
Andrea Gibson's Take Me With You provides readers a glimpse into their inner-musings in palatable, bite-sized pieces.

The Gondolier

/ Dave K. / Fiction
Riviere's the gondelier waggles his bushy eyebrows at specific points during each of his songs to amuse the adults. As he sings for the crowd, he scans their faces. Smiles of a certain width guarantee a coin—or better yet, a colorful bank note—tossed underhand into his boat.

The White Men Who Haunt Me: On Gender, Race, & Being Watched

/ Corinne Schneider / Letters & Essays
White men – mostly locals, but some tourists – rev their trucks and spill out their windows, leering at us, mostly at me, the white, extremely femme, blonde girl. The nice lake-goers are annoyed with this display but say nothing.

First into a murmur. Then into a song.

/ Naveen Kishore / Misc
It isn’t that I am afraid. It is more the vertigo that accompanies this feeling in my bones. The fact that there is nothing they do not know.

Choosing Sides

/ Salimah Perkins / Letters & Essays
For me, there’s a kinship that is inextricably linked with race that produces a resilient loyalty. It’s not blind or without complication, but it is overarching.

Fat

/ Steven Leyva / Poetry
...running through New Orleans, along bones layered with neighborhood, fat and hungry bulldozers, a parade down to Lent...

The Doldrums

/ Dave K. / Fiction
Sometimes the rain burns your skin, other times it merely stings. When you feel puckish enough to try raising the sails again, they are full of holes.

Jeremiad against this Executive Order

/ Ed Simon / Letters & Essays, Misc
When we have failed at our charge and in the words of John Winthrop we’ve been “made a story and by word through the world?” Then we recommit ourselves.

Vlad’s Take on the Apple iPhone

/ Vlad Savich / Interviews
My grandmother showed me one of the 10 commandments (now available as an Apple iPhone app): Thou shalt not steal.

ACA First-Person: Rahne Alexander

/ Rahne Alexander / Letters & Essays
The ACA, in combination with policy changes by my insurer, has rejuvenated me; it has provided me a great deal of hope for the future. I am so grateful for this hopeful spark; it’s been this thing more than any other that has kept me from falling into complete despair these last weeks.

Jars of Preserves

Amen

/ J. Edward Leonard / Poetry
I bit the hand that force-fed me faith, bitter and rotten, swallowed by my father and his father and his father before him.

Retraumatization; Or, 8 Nov. 2016

/ Rahne Alexander / Misc
I want the generation that comes after this to never feel this feeling.

Thot Prosses

/ Abby Higgs / Misc
I am a woman who tilts. I naturally lean forward when I walk, as though my frontal lobe is one of the heaviest parts of my body.

Ode to Blues

/ J. Edward Leonard / Poetry
I’ve heard your lightning crying under the thunder of electric slide-guitars.

Vlad’s Top Five Bob Dylan Songs

/ Vladimir Savich / Music
Bob Dylan is a Nobel Prize winner. Bob Dylan is everything for us.

The Ferrante Farrago

/ Rachel Stirling / Letters & Essays
I hope that all reputable journals and forms of press will decide to allow Ferrante her peace. It would be idiocy to chase her for comment.

#DragRace Diary 6: What Alaska Did

/ Joseph Spece / Misc
You may cry out: But this is a competition, prick—why shouldn’t Alaska be mercenary in her eliminations?

Of Canons and Marginal Poets

/ Edward Simon / Letters & Essays
Unless you are a scholar of sixteenth and seventeenth century literature you have probably never heard of John Taylor the Water Poet. Or for that matter Robert Greene, the bohemian university wit, or Richard Barnfield, the sodomitical sonneteer.

The Queen Mob Affair #7 (Finale)

/ Jessica Sequeira / Fiction
Somehow we made our way through andromedas, dark energy and red shifts, pressing ever on.

The Privileged Mope

/ Emily Linstrom / Letters & Essays
A "Privileged Mope" is genetically blessed with good looks, ample time, and the kind of ennui perfume ads aspire to sell you on.