-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Long Lonely
by Aimee Seu I don’t know when I learned my father was a pastor who slept with the women in his congregation. Grief was a spare room where we put things. Inherited memory of my father singing karaoke: O my love, my darling, I’ve hungered for your touch…the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody, deep untrained voice I…
-
Inside the Dollhouse
by Amanda Gaines I didn’t want help. After all, I’d put together the matching yellow couches I’d ordered online in less than two hours, both of which managed to not only stay upright, but hold my weight. The apartment I’d moved into was open and wide. I’d hauled in all the clothes, books, shelves, and…
-
Instinctual
by Will McMillan I didn’t know better because I didn’t know anything. That’s why I went out with him. Thirty-five is so late to come out of the closet, so late to begin that awkward, sweaty procedure of dating. Especially internet dating. Especially gay internet dating. From the filtered profile pics of tanned faces I’ve…
-
Inheritance
by Andrea Ruggirello One morning when I was in high school, I borrowed my mother’s earrings. Round, gold cages with pearls in the center. No one at school seemed to notice them, but I held them gently between my forefinger and thumb as I sat in class. Somewhere, on the walk home maybe, I lost…
