Settling Into The Rest Home for Ragged Girls
By Anika CarpenterThe island’s breakers rattle windows. Filthy storm clouds snigger, ‘“the jetty is as brittle as your bones.”
I Wish I Could Tell My Dead Husband
By Jamy BondThat I stole his Percocet stash and then helped him look for it. That I found his suicide note tucked inside his dog-eared copy of Infinite Jest.
In the Psychiatric Emergency Room
By Yu LiYou make up reasons for skipping pills. You must lie because the robins are watching, rolling both paranoid eyeballs, their jaundiced bellies bulging...
Photo Story: A Hundred Different Kinds of Rain
By Karen WalkerLost rain wandering parking lots and highways in search of the earth. Down-on-its-luck rain watering plastic petunias on a twentieth-floor balcony.
Betty’s Begonia
By Sharon BoyleThey buried Betty between bomb raids in a no-fuss, grassy grave. Overnight the sod erupted with vagina-pink begonias.
Photo Story: The Cakes She Promised to Bake
By Mary AmatoMarjorie 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.
Southern Discomforts
By Molly GilesDean’s wife was in one of her moods, she had a lot of moods, that girl, and she burst into the party baited for bear.
After attending an anti-war protest in Hyde Park
By Sam PayneA 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.
Out of Why
By Bryan StarchmanIt was Day 172 of sheltering in place and Karen was going to kill her family.
The week our landlord kicks us out
By Frankie McMillanNo 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.
In Case You Missed It
By Kim MagowanThere 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.
Photo Story: Rigs Full O’ Pigs
By Lisa H. OwensThe squealing of hogs was enough to make his ears bleed. He’d driven all night … Rigs Full O’ Pigs. He liked the sound of that.
Foreclosure
By Alice HatcherThey ordered beef bourguignon and an expensive bottle of cabernet, something extravagant to celebrate the closing.
