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The Measure of Progress
by Weston Cutter You’re made of stardust but you’re supposed to forget it.Same as you’re supposed to forget how lifeonce required escaping something trying to eat you every day.Everyone’s at least once been the answer to someone else’s questioneven when you were just reciting lists of ingredients:lemons to brighten dark meat, new dustpanto gather more…
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One more chair
by Wong Chun Ying I think it’s in this 200-square-foot roomwith a bed, a desk and a chair, a portable stove tuckedaway under the sink, that you fixed the blinkinglights, looked around the room, and said to me,“We only need one more chair,” instead of arack for my vinyls of mediocre Taiwanese post-punkbands, instead of…
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The Window
by Matthew Valades Outside, an eager breezeshakes the tree branchesto pieces. This window isa way to count the colorsof passing moments like carsfilled with people I don’t knowand may never sit witharound their kitchen tablewhile dinner steams before us.Those cars must be goingsomewhere important fastor somewhere they’d rather notbut go anyway, whalewatching maybe, where a…
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It’s Common for Alzheimer’s Patients to Reach for a Word
by Sarah Carey they know, that comes to them like airor the name of their first dog or the children: oldest, middle, babythough I am all my siblings now the therapist says it’s not unusualfor my mother to call her medicine the virus as everything we’ve breathed this past yearis pandemic, normal for her to…
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Elegy for a Eulogy
by Cindy King You asked me to deliver the eulogyat Dad’s memorial serviceto spare the survivors of our familythe mortifying prospect of public speaking.For five hours, I have flown above earth,wordlessly, over Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.Under a moon of reading light, I have learnedwhy no one ever calls it a light by which to…
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I have witnessed my wife absorb
by Dylan Taylor Surf and sunshinepressed deep intosalted lipsA flutter kick takes form Kisses and fingersthat smooth onarms who willalways do the tucking Tears, silencesthe silver strippedmoments of languorloss and longing A handshake thatturns into a careerSunglasses thatturn into a scavenger hunt Seventy-thousandbobby pinsSeventy-thousandexpectations not her own The rise and fallof dermis and detritusThe changing…
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The Boxers I Sniffed in a Boy’s Bathroom in Middle School
by Dylon Jones after Doug Paul Case They were blue, patternedwith little white ships, the waist wrinkled loose in the back where one of his brosyanked them down after the game. Everyone laughed. Him, too. Even me.I sculpted a grin & picked sand from my teeth. What else can you do when you’re a boy & a boypinches…
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My Father Has Me Hold a Hen
by Alfredo Aguilar against the dirt. i feel its plumage, panic as it struggles to get out of my grasp. he yells at me con ganas! como si tienes huevos! & lightning flashes through me. i want to shove him, but i do nothing, say nothing— just clench the bird’s wings tighter as he brings a knife down on its neck. once, my father…
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Personal Statement: Foraminifera / Pohlsepia
by Danielle Weeks Personal Statement: Foraminifera I am from the kingdom of what I am not,shout and lung, a shell that stays hiddenin the body. I am not the girl who stoppedbreathing when she climbed the cemeterywall. I am the way you draw the invisible:Here is a thin dotted outline. Here is lightwithout sugar. All…
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Fathering
by Alec Prevett I was born inthe same hospitalas my father Does that make me eligible to be a father Can the gender less father I can crush the bulb of a flower until prematurely its petals shoot forthlike a hundredviolet limbs I saygenderless but mean genderful like how white is the whole spectrum at once I have asked my body what it wants, offered to plant a garden in its…
