Category: 22.1

  • A Brief Alteration of Color

    by Sarah Horner / hunger                               / taste                            / bruise              / build/ ease                            / rest                                                              / dawn The sun is round. The sun is round warm gentle lightAt dawn. I look right at it. You wake up slowlyYou wake up slowly                     You wake up slowly                                   / bloom Crack a window. Let the breeze meet                 Last night’s love-air                                                           / decay…

  • The Dream Men

    by Rebecca Bernard       In my dreams, the boys love me. Our hands furious against one another’s sides. Often, there’s little fruition, only build up. Usually, I’m still married, but I’ve discovered a loophole that allows for each fleeting tryst, guilt-free. A sundae with whipped cream and two cherries.      I call them boys, but they’re men, of…

  • The Lungs Remember Breath

    by Aliyah Cotton                   It was hopscotch and scraped knees    yellow monkey bars and      hands    rubbed raw    hands that knew exactly    the weight of a pinecone      and what it meant to the fallen thing    to be noticed and held    and thrown                  back down again    and it was not caring that the grilled…

  • Explaining White Privilege to My Ancestors

    By Kimberly O’Connor it does not meanyou didn’t drive the muleup the mountain every morning it does not mean the outhousewas a pleasure it does not mean you had enough to eator that you grew up easy that no one ever looked at yousideways and mean-eyedthat you didn’t carry water from the spring it does…

  • Caballerial

    By Larry Narron                        I managed to fail           ninth grade English lit                       with a curling            issue of Thrasheror Big Brother hidden           behind the paper                        bag-covered textbook           in my lap, the one with                       the abridged version            of Great Expectations.Our lives are mostly           as small as a thumb                        nail photo           sequence unfolding                       in a borrowed skate mag            whose pages are allfalling out, one by one,           like the…

  • The Boy

    By Franz Jørgen Neumann       Martin is smitten the first time he sees the woman with the sexy nose. Neither pixie nor Roman, Jenny’s nose is longer than most, with comely nostrils. He tries not to stare as he takes the key she offers him. He thanks her for the bag of warm rolls, then carries…

  • A Better Man

    by Anthony Abboreno       Claudette and Adam stood outside their RV, staring at the fish Adam had caught. Claudette hadn’t realized anything that huge grew in the Mississippi. It was the size of a Saint Bernard, its flesh gouged with scars like trails on an old mountain. Now, it lay in an inflatable wading pool decorated…

  • wild

    by Rebecca Callahan wild/wīld/ adjective: wild; comparative adjective: wilder; superlative adjective: wildest 1. (of an animal or plant) living or growing in the natural environment; not domesticated or       cultivated.       A small girl in a photograph: lined up with siblings and cousins, standing at the edge of her       parents’ property, tangled hair hanging to her waist,…

  • If I Could See You In Miami

    By Connor Watkins-Xu 1993 Young, younger, your mother, states away. No onecalls you crater-faced. You get to be Stephanie for a while. Summer goes until December, and boys love to hear you sayY’all are crazy down here, your Alabama accent in the ear for a moment, like sun-showers on beach-burned skin.You don’t have to worry…

  • Aphrodite as a Fat Woman

    By Elizabeth Higgins I. Seventh grade humanities class. Ancient Greece.Each table group is a city-state. Each teacher is a god. I sit in the southeast corner of Corinth.Our teacher stands in front of the class and tells us she is Aphrodite. There’s snickering because the idea is absurd,the comedic formula familiar: fat woman thinks she’s…