SUMMER
2026 | Volume Four
Genre cover by G. J. Gillespie
POETRY
Genre cover by Clinton Khile-Brägger
Lobular
Sheila Black
“Your name, spangling the soil / your name, fawned out
in sky-writing.”
“And I remember / the penknife / on softwood pine. / This was after”
Walking the Neighborhood
Sheila Black
You, Abstracted
“beyond the cold wash / of disbelief I recall feeling / my own innocence like a delicate / membrane under my skin”
Juliana Briggs
“beyond the cold wash / of disbelief I recall feeling / my own innocence like a delicate / membrane under my skin”
The Astronaut
Ambrielle Butler
“Is this acknowledgment stitched from thresholds, or is it the oldest truth of the borderlands, that understanding is born precisely where categories refuse to settle, where the edges dissolve into their own quiet insistence”
Egon and the Two-Faced Cow
Jillian Wardell | Fiction
A Transience
Benjamin Ficklin | Fiction
“And his memory begins with a game of dominoes surrendered,
and his memory begins with her face—ah yes, here she is—green eyes, auburn hair falling over her right eye…”
“Maybe what they'd built—the songs, the memories, the mess of it mattered—it lived on in the people Ray left behind.”
Caterwaul
Casey McConahay | Fiction
Good Old Days
Issue cover by G. J. Gillespie
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
GJ Gillespie is a mixed-media collage artist living in a 1928 Tudor Revival farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. Inspired by mid-century abstract expressionism and the Northwest Mystics, he layers found papers, tissue, acrylic, and graphite into compositions drawn from mythology, music, and shared cultural memory, titling each work after a rock, pop, or folk song. Winner of 19 awards, his art has appeared in 74 exhibitions and 217 publications. He has completed six residencies at the University of Washington Whiteley Center, Friday Harbor Labs. When he is not making art, he runs Leda Art Supply, his international premium sketchbook brand.
“Every piece I paint, every word I write is something I’ve done, I am the man in the red shirt, the hot dog vendor, the guy who built the roller coaster. I have always felt wherever I am is where I am supposed to be, because I have already been there. Paint it, write about it, share it. I already lived it, and I am again.”