Greetings! I am so pleased to present our milestone 50th issue of carte blanche magazine. This online literary journal of ours has been chugging along for a remarkable twenty years since 2004.
Read Moreby Rachel M. Hanson
The word Nankoweap is Paiute and the phrase carries differing meanings, such as “place where people were killed” and “place that echoes.”
Read Moreby Andrew Field
Andrew Field is a librarian and cartoonist who writes and draws mostly about mental health. He recently had a cartoon published by Bluestem Magazine, and reviews books for Graphic Medicine.
Read Moreby Eamann Breen
When we were young, we loved the Mulligan sisters. There were two of them and two of us. If we could have been a pop band we would have been the Supremes, except there were four of us and we were white and two of us were boys. The Mulligan Sisters wanted to marry us and were the same age. A joint wedding was secretly planned.
Read Moreby Kai Cheng Thom
He gave her a library so she’d know he was the sensitive kind of Beast – not one of those monsters who’d kidnap a girl, blackmail her into staying, brutally ravish her then eat her for dinner without a second thought. This, clearly, was the romantic kind of hostage situation, the type of abduction that was a prelude to romance.
Read Moreby Leah Hilson
Freddie was hiding in the shower when I got home. Steam curled to the door, greeting me, damp and warm like a dog panting on my face. The train ride was long. Ice and snow smothered the tracks, strangling wheels intent on trudging through. And at every station, a strange parade of orange vests would receive us, lugging industrial sized shovels, fixed on digging us out.
Read Moreby Tara McGowan-Ross
I’m not saying Sarah wasn’t my friend, but she pissed me off. Always going on about things. Her parents. A man. There was always a man.
Read Moreby Mary Thaler
Leah sat behind the counter of the café looking at her phone while Melike rummaged through their work cubbies.
“Do you want all these flyers?” Melike called, all earnestness, as if Leah somehow didn’t know the tidying was a pretext and that Melike was hoping to find another of her sketchbooks.
Read Moreby Mia Huang
This series of memories was mostly taken on an expired Fuji ETERNA 250D in Wuhan (2020), where and when the first case of Covid-19 took place.
Read Moreby Hannah Polinski
A few Augusts ago, I became obsessed with a story I heard of a couple whose baby was attacked by a bat after the mother left her bedroom window open for the sea breeze. She kissed her baby goodnight, and returned to find them covered in bite marks.
Read Moreby Meghan Harrison
“Perfect Combustion”
says the back of the van
waiting to turn left in front of
the deconsecrated church.
by Stefanie Kirby
The body of a moth is velvet. The body of a moth
is light. The body of a woman fills with moths and light
by Cassandra Whitaker
They are the space between each beard stroke / these two—them in their love—how their bodies grow
Read Moreby AJ Bermudez, translated from Naima Lahbil Tagemouat
A long day ahead. A beautiful day!
Tonight they’d all see. They’d gouge their eyes out tonight.
Read Moreby E. Merrill Brouder, translated from Jean Le Roy
On the asphalt of my street, the rain makes a black reflection that gathers a collection
of the evening, of the lights.