By Stephen D. Gutierrez Our neighbor Lil looked like a TV Indian, all sunbaked and leathery. She wandered the streets brokenly, ill dressed, barely attuned.
By Nicholas A. White Blood-red eyes, a forearm against the light, meetings and deadlines to attend. Mouths to feed, cars to buy, doctors to pay. And politics.
By Emma Bogdonoff Once you knew a boy and you loved him though you never said. Through so many years, you never said. It made you irreplaceable; who else could say so much with so few words?
By Pamela Painter
They want to know why some characters get long stories while they get Micro, Sudden, Flash. Why some characters get cities or towns, streets, homes with dog houses and dogs that howl in the night.
By Dinty W. Moore
My father was known throughout our neighborhood for his honey-rich tenor, his mastery of Irish-American songs, and Sinatra standards.
By Deborah Rocheleau
Why does everyone patronize mice? They’re always “unwanted guests,” or “the new resident.” Never “the prisoner on death row” or “the vessel for deadly diseases you would rather avoid.”
By Joseph Heathcott
In our wanderings about the city, we pass through each other. What is a human being, after all? Nine of every ten cells in our bodies are not human: bacteria, fungi, viruses, yeasts and symbiants.
By Andrea Spofford When my mother calls she talks about the succulents in her backyard, how she overflowed the pool because she forgot to turn off the water, my father's new job at Rainbird, how she's worried, at 57, she's too old for this.
By Rhonda Shary Vacation had been unfolding as if charmed. With car windows open, idling in the small grocery’s parking lot, we studied the local map of Provincetown. If Mary Oliver would only wander past, all would be perfect.
By Jonathan Starke
You box to forget her. The soft olive skin, how she walked as if straddling a line, the no-names of children you will never have. And this hurts when you look at your hands. Pain comes with each punch.
By Paul Oh
At Hunter’s Point, the No. 7 noses out of the East River tunnel, glimpsing Queens for the first time. Factories, then row houses, bodegas, 99 cent stores.
By H.K. Hummel
At four a.m., our cat lays a starling down in the hallway. The bird’s complaint sounds like green branches snapping. Its eye contains night sky.
By Grant Faulkner The menacing artistry of a rusted piece of tin, the pulse of its patina, incrustations. Sharp corners demand such sharpness. A shine requires work, exertion, planning, orders...