Photo Story: When Jimmy Leaves Me Again
By Francine WitteI throw his orphaned clothes into the washer’s gaping mouthhole. I push back words it is wanting to say – oh but he is so beautiful and what about his soft-lip kiss.
Photo Story: Just a Piece of Junk
By Elena ZhangThere’s a tornado knocking on my door. It’s been knocking since two a.m. Since my father drove away in his car.
Photo Story: Another Earth
By Rachel CainMarcus finds a dandelion, its billowy head long gone. What remains is sticky and burnt. He makes a wish anyway.
Photo Story: From Here, It’s All the Same
By L. SovieroThe pilot tells his wife life is miniature in his work: small armies of toiletries, itty bitty sewing kits, baby bottles of booze. His wife teases that every time he comes home, he looks smaller too.
Photo Story: Day Dream, 1980 (after Andrew Wyeth)
Sarah GillettHelga Testorf looked at herself in the gallery. She remembered that day well. The bed, so close to the window that it almost touched the wall.
Photo Story: Voltage
Cheryl SnellMy brain has dragged a thought into the traffic jam, daring it to run into the street beneath cables dangling from junction boxes either sucking up misplaced electricity, or stretched like clotheslines on the verge of fraying.
Photo Story: Everything to Me
Andrea DanielsThe bristles of the broom were degrees of red and pink, accumulated over the years from the slow push towards the drain in the center of the room. An infinitesimal grade designed to lend gravity a hand.
Photo Story: The Weatherman Gets It Wrong Again
Adam ConnerHe is needed at the station because of the impending snowstorm and his wife just rolls her eyes again.
Photo Story: Root Systems
By Dominique ZinoThe afternoon before, we’d hiked. The path was mostly paved. Still, the trip was an escape from their children.
Photo Story: The Errand
By Cheryl SnellBefore one sandal kicks off the other by the door; before the run across the busy street, cloth bags fluttering; before the break away from joggers prancing at the stop sign ...
Photo Story: My Father’s X-ray
By Francine WitteEven with his memory gone, his teeth continue, and I take my father to the dentist because food must be chewed, and the father he was would never use a feeding tube.
Photo Stories: “Witness Statement” and “Ancestral Astronomy”
We had a rare situation occur with this photo prompt: a tie. So we decided to publish both fine stories.
Photo Story: Earth Day
By Emily RiversYour pencil snaps halfway through the SAT. Hand up, you stare at the Earth Day poster above the proctor’s head. It says: We Are The Future!
Photo Story: Past Life
By Rachel CainBefore erosion and time morphed it into a wonder worth gawking at, this was just a place.
Photo Story: Seasonal Monogamy
By Rachel CainAt the park we watch the sunset turn muddled purple, like a bruise. He says, “Did you know ducks are only partners for a season?”
Photo Story: Declarations
By Erika NgHer voice is swallowed by the sound of a dozen languages cutting across your ears. You ask her to repeat the question and she says, more annoyed this time, “Do you have anything to declare?”
Photo Story: Warm and Alive
By Andrea DanielsA careful undertaker from Sheepshead Bay. We met via personal ad, his exactly three lines long. A tidy accounting of loneliness.
Photo Story: 1974
By Riley AnnWe didn’t talk that summer. My father drowned out the silence with the news: Nixon, war, the World Series...
Photo Story: If I Could Buy Thoughts
By Amy MarquesI would give a penny to the student who sits in the back and looks down whenever they sense a question coming ...
Photo Story: The Candy Store Thinks She’s an Ocean
By Linda Grierson-IrishShe’d glimpsed scenes from a documentary on a girl’s mobile screen. Now her syrupy exhalations smell brackish.
