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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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Like Mother
by Harrison Geosits My mother is Filipino, fresh off the plane, and I am her half-breed son, the firstborn son, but I did not inherit her Pacific Islander DNA; I am not thin and tan and woman-hungry like her father and brother and nephews and other son, I do not have the same un-grown-up-ness; I…
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By the Time I Finish This Book
by Elizabeth Vignali The northern white rhino will be extinct. My oldest daughter will get braces. I will go on a date with a social worker. I will throw away 540 sandwich bags. I will throw away a beat-up Barbie dollhouse too trashed to be donated. I will throw away forty-seven toothpaste caps, white-ridged floating…
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Playing the Body
by Matthew Mastricova When I was 12, I had to draw a scale model of myself in class. I did my best to obscure the measurements from my classmates, writing them as small and crooked as eyelashes. When I shrank myself down to a size that would fit on an 8.5×14” sheet of paper, I…
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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…
