When the decision letters came, he didn’t even open a single envelope from the Cali schools. He believed the East was where the heart of the country resided. Surely, people there would notice his intellect and talents. Surely, they would give a shit about the stuff he was passionate about.
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A January without Heat by Tara Ballard
What is a lover in hat and scarf at the stove when dead / is the roadmap? He asks me for something unexpectedly beautiful, like a poet / might, so I leave my stone home for the garden.
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Only Boats by Colette Cosner
Blank space skips a generation. / I don't know from art or what I lack. At the funeral / her children fought over last rites and good china. / I said nothing, so got only boats.
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Fitness Test by Sasha Tandlich
The kids say things behind his back when he makes them stand at attention at the start of class. He has three classes at once; there are too many kids and all he’s trying to do is keep them under control. His strictness is read as meanness, but he only looks angry because his transition lenses are taking too long to adjust to the bright Florida sun.
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How to Survive a Date by Holly Pelesky
You will show no signs of weaknesses. There is power in your womanhood. You of pants on a first date, of fight classes, of weaponry.
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Two Poems by Jennifer Lynn Krohn
they want a corpse, / a girl who'll only grow / skinnier with rot. A girl / who will disappear / into a handful of dust.
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Adventures of Ghost Girl by M Jaime Zuckerman
She longs / for the feeling of slipping / between fresh sheets & lying there / like a clean corpse.
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Answer Woman by Michael Chin
The extent of what she knew for sure about her past was trapped inside the glass dome of a snow globe, the weight at the bottom of her rucksack for every move she had made.
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Women's Work by Celeste Colgan
I never learned. In a year’s time, Mother, Buck, and the chicken coop were gone. Aunt Betty bought chickens already drawn at the meat counter. I thought a lot about beheadings.
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Door Girl by Candace Jane Opper
The whole institution seemed to exist by and for men, particularly male musicians, and more particularly male musicians who’d fully bought into the fantasy of rock and roll, which essentially resembles the kind of up-all-night debauchery romanticized in Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical Almost Famous.
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The Only Thing Left by Thomas Price
I know it seems odd that that long, strong bone in the leg can think, let alone feel, but it was still part of me, and as it lay in the bed, night into day and day into night, all it could wonder was, with so much of me gone, why hadn’t it been enough?
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A Normal Interview with Jubi Arriola-Headley by Arielle K. Jones
Kink has a more expansive meaning. … Kink as just that, sexual kinkiness. Kink as, the kink in Black folks’ hair. Kink as, a kink in the system. Kink as in, broke. So, I play off all the different ways that kink is a thing that we think about.
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Brief Histories by Joe Bonomo
These images commingle now in memory as my first headlong descent into the strangeness of grief.
Read MoreThree Poems by Sonia Feldman
the small birds stepping like dames / through the green aisles, / and the strawberry plants blushing / on the garden floor-- / I've never known another place / as animal for longing.
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Black Cactus by Marc Tweed
The sun bathes the front of the shop in a new white light as he readies to open. A small gray bird has made its way in somehow, slamming itself repeatedly against the big spotless window and he uses a broom to gently prod it out the propped-open door to freedom.
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Obituary (For my Cousin) by Emma Kaiser
He tried to form a band with a group that included my high school boyfriend, but kicked them all out of his house when they didn’t take the music as seriously as he did.
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A Man Explodes by John Honkala
They want answers. Did the man explode? Can a man explode? Why have you said nothing? Why is the press silent too? The man with the megaphone climbs a fence and calls to the police station.
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Purple Flowers by Kira K. Homsher
I keep hoping a storm will come and sweep away all this clutter, all these dollhouse messes.
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One Last Time by Cathy Luna
Memory doesn’t work like writing, one word at a time, one ant in a line. It’s more like a science-class filmstrip on fire in the projector, one image blooming orange-white and black into another.
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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Two Poems by Nicholas Gruber
i brush my cheek with a lover so bewildered by kissing, he detonates / my clenched gristle instead. in red honey clothes, i am similar flesh / & you know new lovers: always making do.
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