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Buttstuff
by Emrys Donaldson Susan Sontag led me to sodomy. When I read her work, I considered how my early art experiences were incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual.i The moment when I started in surprise at the shade of gray used in a painting at the Fleming Museum because of its uncanny mimesis…
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Lemon Seeds
by Vero González A few months before leaving for Whidbey Island, I start having a recurring nightmare about miscarrying in the woods, alone. I don’t tell anyone. Why would I? I am not pregnant. I will be at Hedgebrook, a dream writing residency for women writers, for four weeks. I will figure out a structure…
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Couples Therapy
by Eliza Smith Adapted from the Relationship Institute’s Couples Intake Questionnaire, written by Steven D. Solomon, Ph.D. and Lorie J. Teagno, Ph.D. Q: What is the problem that led you to couples therapy?A: I woke up last Thursday and realized that I didn’t want to be married anymore. Q: How long have you and your…
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Violet Bloom
by Sara Ryan violet is a spectral color. one might think the flower was named after the color, but it’s the other way around. violet has its own set of wavelengths on the spectrum of visible light. violet sounds a lot like violent. on the spectrum of visible light, it is between blue and invisible ultraviolet.…
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By Diverse Means We Arrive At the Same Enders
by Jeremy Klemin Lisbon, Portugal: July 8th, 2010 I see my mother’s maiden name everywhere. There are firsts. First cousins and first times hearing another person call my own mother cousin, prima. Is it the first time that I realize she is not just a mother but also a cousin, albeit one diluted by a…
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Poke
by Janine Kovac I put the bottle of vodka on the dressing room table and closed the door. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Lára asked in her light accent. She squinted at me. “Of course!” I lied. I’d never lanced another person’s blister before but it couldn’t be too different from the countless times…
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DEXA
by Devon Houtz He takes a step closer to the table I lie on. “We measure the hips and lower spine,” he says, framing his hands over my pubic bone. “That’s really all we need.” This is standard, but he doesn’t mention it. There is, must be, a clean and logical explanation, developed through debate and…
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Inhabited
by Kathleen McNamara It’s late March, 1936, on a farm in Wald, Switzerland, a village in the canton of Zürich. A thirty-one-year-old woman, nine months pregnant for the first time, begins to feel a warm pulse of back pain snake around her hips. This is the start of labor: contractions that require silence to bear,…
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Via Negativa
by Susanna Donato Remember honeybees, each flying inch of activity, powdery saddlebags fluffed with pollen. The wild bees, their tiny hovers of black and green, are my favorites, but I will miss honey. Remember cheap overseas flights, when you could bring baggage, when you’d never heard of carbon offsets, when you didn’t know every contrail melted…
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My Autobiography In Water
by Ron Riekki The Sámi for water is cháhci. Liquid is golggus. The Finn for water is vesi. Liquid is neste. I’m Sámi and Karelian and Finn. Balkan too. I like to ask people sometimes to name their favorite Karelian writers. Their favorite Finnish movies. Their favorite Sámi poets and Balkan TV shows. And then I listen…
