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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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wild
by Rebecca Callahan wild/wīld/ adjective: wild; comparative adjective: wilder; superlative adjective: wildest tame/tām/ adjective: tame; comparative adjective: tamer; superlative adjective: tamest re·wild/rēˈwīld/ verb: rewild; 3rd person present: rewilds; past tense: rewilded; past participle: rewilded; gerund or present participle: rewilding Rebecca Callahan is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing from Brigham Young University. Originally from…
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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…
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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…
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Strange Effects on the Body
by Sophie Panzer My nosebleed starts seven days after my parents’ funeral. The virus takes them quickly, my mother right after my father, that first plague winter. I do not invite anyone to the cemetery with me except the rabbi. People offer to come anyway, but I refuse—it seems wrong for the living to risk…
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Two of Every Kind
By Lauren Osborn And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you. — Genesis 6:19 On the first day of the end of the world, she finds a spider in her kitchen. Or perhaps it’s not the end of the world, but…
