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The Measure of Progress
by Weston Cutter You’re made of stardust but you’re supposed to forget it.Same as you’re supposed to forget how lifeonce required escaping something trying to eat you every day.Everyone’s at least once been the answer to someone else’s questioneven when you were just reciting lists of ingredients:lemons to brighten dark meat, new dustpanto gather more…
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One more chair
by Wong Chun Ying I think it’s in this 200-square-foot roomwith a bed, a desk and a chair, a portable stove tuckedaway under the sink, that you fixed the blinkinglights, looked around the room, and said to me,“We only need one more chair,” instead of arack for my vinyls of mediocre Taiwanese post-punkbands, instead of…
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The Window
by Matthew Valades Outside, an eager breezeshakes the tree branchesto pieces. This window isa way to count the colorsof passing moments like carsfilled with people I don’t knowand may never sit witharound their kitchen tablewhile dinner steams before us.Those cars must be goingsomewhere important fastor somewhere they’d rather notbut go anyway, whalewatching maybe, where a…
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It’s Common for Alzheimer’s Patients to Reach for a Word
by Sarah Carey they know, that comes to them like airor the name of their first dog or the children: oldest, middle, babythough I am all my siblings now the therapist says it’s not unusualfor my mother to call her medicine the virus as everything we’ve breathed this past yearis pandemic, normal for her to…
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Directions to the Eve of Eight
by Kami Westhoff 1. Start from the place you now call home, where cherry blossoms erupt overnight and the scent of lilac lulls you into thinking maybe everything is going to be okay. A doe tracks you from the overgrown flowerbed, her eyes stitched to the blur of your body. She’s pregnant, stiffens as you…
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Communion
by Madeline Vosch I had gone to the café just to get out of the house. My apartment was carpeted, and when the sun hit at midday, the space got small and uninhabitable. I had just taken a shower, my hair leaving wet patches on my shirt. I was always a little bit of a…
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Elegy for a Eulogy
by Cindy King You asked me to deliver the eulogyat Dad’s memorial serviceto spare the survivors of our familythe mortifying prospect of public speaking.For five hours, I have flown above earth,wordlessly, over Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.Under a moon of reading light, I have learnedwhy no one ever calls it a light by which to…
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I have witnessed my wife absorb
by Dylan Taylor Surf and sunshinepressed deep intosalted lipsA flutter kick takes form Kisses and fingersthat smooth onarms who willalways do the tucking Tears, silencesthe silver strippedmoments of languorloss and longing A handshake thatturns into a careerSunglasses thatturn into a scavenger hunt Seventy-thousandbobby pinsSeventy-thousandexpectations not her own The rise and fallof dermis and detritusThe changing…
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Homesick Island
by Bea ChangBeacon Street Prize Winner, Nonfiction, 2021 The last passenger towed his suitcase out of the airport, the wheels scraping the island’s midnight quiet. As the door sighed shut behind him, I caught a taste of the air, thick with humidity, from the acres of volcanic mountains and merciless jungles just beyond the city.…
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So You May Sleep Again
I had been embroidering dead people on pillowcases for seven years before I ran into any trouble. It was a long, quiet stretch of time, during which I sat in the front room of my house at a small table, colored embroidery floss hanging around me like a web, stitching in the light of the…
