Kept by Jane Marcellus
Moores lived next door. He worked construction; she stayed home. I don’t know how old he was, but I remember that on her birthday, she turned twenty-two. It seemed old. I was twelve. Moores had a baby, Sidney. Their…
Tag: Language
Ugly by Leesa Fenderson
Ugly, ain’t it? The whole fuck of it. The way the doctor’s fingers patted the rim of skin on Mummy’s concave chest. The twin rims where she, Doctor Small Tits, had cut off Mummy’s two breasts, golden brown to…
Last Cut / No, No One Wins by DM O’Connor
Last Cut All firsts. You let me drive. You let me choose the radio station. You rested your huge head against the headrest, closed your eyes. Never a willing passenger. Seventy-five quiet kilometres to the London Regional Palliative…
Dash by Sarah Fawn Montgomery
At dusk the light goes diffuse, like slow motion, like simple. The backyard trees are velvet; cirrus swift brushstrokes make the sky seem safe. The railroad rattling through the front yard slows too, whistle filtered through the gloaming until…
As I Make My Crooked Way by Jules Hogan
I want to be a better person, so I hide my bad habits. When I lived alone, in a chilly, oceanside city, I let the evidence accumulate like flotsam around me. Now, I’m twenty-seven and I live in my…
The Ties that Bind by Tammy Delatorre
On the Big Island of Hawai‘i, Honokaa is the town tourists drive through to get to Waipi‘o Valley. At the top of the valley is a scenic overlook, which provides an unobstructed view to the black sand beach, river,…
In the Winter by Puloma Ghosh
I become quite pretty in the winter, in the dim afternoons with sheet metal skies. I line my lips with brown, burgundy, wine and whiskey stains. I crave bright fruits as though they’ll substitute the daylight—sunset persimmons, sunrise grapefruit,…
Let’s Say, Triptych by Steven Sherrill
Let’s say you follow her home. The barefoot girl on the corner of Union, where Nut Creek gnaws at the back steps of a church and the struggling crisis center. She cuts her own hair, with garden clippers. Let’s…
Adapted from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s Definitions of “Rock” by Audrey Bauman
rock verb \ ˈräk \ rocked; rocking; rocks transitive verb 1 : to move back and forth in or as if in a cradle Every ten years the Arkansas catfish woman emerges from her riverbed and rocks to-and-fro, lets…
Big Feelings by Ian Saunders
When you arrive, the boy is perched on the kitchen island with a serrated knife in his hand. Stabbing at the vacuum-sealed top of a plastic cereal bag. When he sees you in the doorway, he grins a wild…
