By Dave Donovan Life got too complex for Dan. Job. Wife. Kids. Yard. So he bought a block of Post-It notes and found a calmess in the sticky squares...
By Karen Walker Lost rain wandering parking lots and highways in search of the earth. Down-on-its-luck rain watering plastic petunias on a twentieth-floor balcony.
By Gay Degani Rosemary, mint, and donkey dung perfume the hot, dry air. Hawkers croon siren songs as I meander crowded alleys, ignoring patterned baskets...
By Mary Amato
Marjorie hadn’t noticed that one of the eggs was broken until she arrived home. Once, she had been the kind of person to check before purchasing.
By Sam Payne A fatality on the line at Acton stops the trains leaving Paddington and we stare at the departure boards, eyes still stinging from the tear gas.
By Katie Burgess We were neighborhood royalty right up until the cops searched our house. They weren’t even looking for Arabella—they wanted all the car stereos Daddy took.
By Frankie McMillan No rescue anywhere so we huddle around a fire under the railway bridge. Bennie says he knows where to score free chicken and he scrolls the Poultry Rehoming page.
By Kim Magowan
There was a window when one could grocery shop without a mask. There was a window after my mother stopped chemo when she felt better, gained a few pounds. The color returned to her face.
By Katelyn Moorman Though the girl had died, she didn’t rot, so the dwarves kept watch over her body. First she was in a glass covering out front, but they thought that gaudy...
By Rich Gravelin The antique mall reeks of nicotine-stained cotton and cold cream. I hunt vintage cufflinks; he buys other families’ photos. Groups of redheads are his Grail.
By Ryan Griffith Where are you Andy Warhol, in all these acres of antiseptics and ointments? Are you hiding under the racks of slacks like a petulant child too cool for his mother?
By Sam Baldassari At the hospital, I’m the bad news. My sister, however, lives. She grows, laughs, and bleeds. Wears clothes and removes them. Scribbles in a journal. Prays.
By Jess D. Taylor My second March without a backyard, and while yes, I miss things about the last place we rented together (especially the thick grass where the girls ran circles), our first rental is what I keep conjuring.
By Andrea Daniels Peanut smoked every bit of meth that night in the hotel. Her sister loaned her money. Not exactly. A check for rehab, far from drugs and close to trees.