The Most Beautiful Woman to Ever Leave Athens, Georgia by Jesse Sensibar

I separated burned bodies from charred helicopter seats and put pieces of  seat in blue plastic body bags. I once sent every yellow-flashing construction sawhorse on West Division street flying in a shower of Bondo and rust from the bent body of my fifty-dollar Cadillac. I swapped dope for Harold’s fried chicken through barred basement doors. I fell in love with a waitress and people said we lived in a Levi’s 501 Blue ad. I was surrounded by girls in black vintage at the Double R Bar beneath the downtown Greyhound station where the Sundowners played until dawn. I smiled as the guy running the chop-shop on my block dumped three Camaro carcasses a week in the vacant lot next door. I drove fast on sweaty nights with a tallboy of Old Style between my thighs and the most beautiful woman to ever leave Athens, Georgia, by my side.


Jesse Sensibar’s work has appeared in The Tishman Review, Stoneboat Journal, Waxwing, and others. His short fiction was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award and the Wilda Hearne Flash Fiction Prize. His first book, Blood in the Asphalt: Prayers from the Highway, was published in 2018 by Tolsun Press and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. You can find him at jessesensibar.com.


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Header Image by Kelcey Parker Ervick

Spot illustration Fall/Winter 2024 by Waringa Hunja

Spot illustrations Fall/Winter 2023 issue by Dana Emiko Coons

Other spot illustrations courtesy Kelcey Parker Ervick, Sarah Salcedo, & Waringa Hunja

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