Bowing to his journal amidst the busyness of the coffee shop, Steven starts in on the final question given to him by a long-distance friend in advance of his psylocibin trip, a question about the nature of his spirituality. “What are your beliefs regarding God?” the question asks. “Do you have reciprocal conversation? Is he/she/it… Continue reading The bad trip
Category: fiction
The Kali Yuga is a teenage hangover
Your mother’s voice, calling you to get ready for school. Immediately, the slice of the headache. The undercurrent of nausea in your throat and stomach, the leaden quality of the bones. You shouldn’t have gone out drinking last night. She is calling again, your mother—her footfalls are nearing your door. When the drinking first began,… Continue reading The Kali Yuga is a teenage hangover
Hungry Ghost, 23A
An earlier version of this story was published by Sixfold Magazine in the winter 2024 issue, available here. For moments now Jeff has entertained the fantasy that he will secure himself an entire row, two empty seats beside him along which he can stretch, lie, even sleep. Perhaps it is the tattoos on his face… Continue reading Hungry Ghost, 23A
The medicine
Long ago, the grandmother sits with the elders and smokes the medicine in the pipe. She is not even technically a grandmother, so much as a great- or great-great-grandmother, an almost mythic figure who, from the vantage of her granddaughter, blends in with the land itself. But in this memory, she is just a girl,… Continue reading The medicine
The rock
He comes to the mesa in his forties and the rock is still there. Long ago, fresh out of college, he and a golden girl had lain in the bare sun and made love on the rock, and it had felt as though a precipice greater than the mesa had been reached, possibilities spanning out… Continue reading The rock
Jackson Holzberg Buckley 