Forum Magazine
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Hyperbole by Jason Szydlik
That girl is a lost doggie sniffing the thunder-scented sidewalks. Somebody said she is even sweeter than the overripe mulberries we used to collect from them. The storm is done barking at her now, but the moon won’t leave her alone. When he raved about champagne, corn, mashed potatoes, he meant snow. Everyone knew him …
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Thesis by Kelly Egan
The party is a disco ball atop deep gloom. I watch it heaving darkly with taboo above the rim of my pink paloma: our host buzzing from group to group, her husband making drinks, the party stretched between them as a thing that together they are holding up, that we all are, to the deities…
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Cut-up Objects by Shannon Wolfe
“You have to know what you’re doing”, my sister says And she’s been through a lot A flood and a fire, A box of butterflies, milk thistle Though I know She’s still never been to Seattle “I have to figure out what I want to sound like” I reply, felling silly and cheaply made Because my tongue is lots of moved…
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memories of my mother. by Jackie Arrieta-Peixoto
sunday | july 26, 2020. 9:27pm memories of my mother. a leftover seed from lunch turned into a tree it leaned upon the kitchen window first inside, then outside rolling fog and burning sun in days of healing and maturing an avocado tree grows in san francisco dinner simmers in a pot my mother’s fingers reminiscent of chopped garlic and vanilla lotion a productive…
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A Troubled Route by Jillian Wasick
Is it time? she asks. Dinner churning in our bodies but only mine with a gate about to close. Come up then, when you’re ready. For shorter breaths,locking spider web, undershirt between steel shell and blistered skin. We gather to it, she a voice behind, Okay baby, pulling apart the slight space between the brace’s back. The meager opening not a joke not the slit cut into curtain…
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The Encounter That Makes Me Want to Eat by Skylar Wu
When you got closer I heard your stomach’s growl It rises in spirals, seduces the silver blade one uses for self-castration you bring about an overwhelming smell of re-digested salad, cheap, filled with hallucinogenic consciousness slathered with a thick, dampened, warm liquid; a gravity filling the gaps between yellowing teeth indiscriminately I read the fourteen lines of…
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SF Field Bay by Deanna Anderson
Deanna Anderson is a San Francisco native, artist and writer. She attends CCSF for Studio Art, hoping to one day transfer to a school in NYC or abroad. In college undergrad, she performed improv comedy, stand up, and sketch, and founded an all female comedy group, and now she writes comedic scripts while continuing her art…
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Interview on “Sestina,” by Amy Miles
“Sestina” (Nonfiction), by Amy Miles Forum: Why did you decide to write this particular piece? Miles: Writing has saved me many times; it brings my non-linear mind a sense of calm and focus. I can impose order on my thoughts, seeing and finding patterns through the many messy drafts I write. I can organize and…
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Glossary (excerpt) by Judy Halebsky
Li Bai — I should tell you that Oakland is a city on the coast of California with lots of things people want to buy with paper money or lines on a page tracked by a bank. This is called abstract wealth. It means money that exists separate from bags of rice or seashells or gold.…
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Where did Kelly wake up and why is there a cat named “Moocher”? Come find out by reading “The Oul Dear” by Wess Phillipson in Forum’s Fall 2020 Fiction!
Kelly blinked her eyes awake, but saw no difference in her vision. The room was absent of light, but she could tell this wasn’t her bed. Being a blackout drunk, she had become accustomed to waking up in strange places; but when she felt the flannel bedding, that’s when she knew she’d hit bottom. Kelly…
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