CREATIVE NONFICTION
The Way Seahorses Hang On by Anne Panning
I. Rain gush-pummels our car. Whippet wipers slash frantically at the whitecaps. Off to Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, to watch our daughter, Lily’s, volleyball tournament. It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving, and our son, Hudson, is meeting us there from Pittsburgh. …
Read More
Mary Ruefle Drives Me to the Dentist by Kelly Luce
Peterborough, New Hampshire We get lost and it’s my fault. I think I know a shortcut. Mary knows only the long way around. I have an appointment for a man to look into my mouth and tell me my…
Read More
Drawing Breath in Chapters by Rose Gerszberg
A stowaway made the long trip to the United States with my mother, father, and me. Unbidden and unticketed, tucked into the pocket of a gray overcoat, chilled by early fall’s ocean breezes, pushed back by hope—grief nevertheless made…
Read More
Women’s Hospital by Anne P. Beatty
They are tearing down Women’s Hospital, where I gave birth to my youngest two, a girl against the flame-bright maples of November, a boy in June’s fat sweat. For years, the hospital stands silent, as we drive to the…
Read More
Mangled Pike Spotted by Kiddie Pool by Faye Wikner
When the fish is dead, it lies in the shallow of water that never goes away, in the dirt, the remnants of blood from my forefinger where I pricked myself four times over, maybe some from that pike, too.…
Read More
Pageant Queen by Ryan Kristopher Jory
This used to be my go-to anecdote when warming up to strangers in bars: the one about my pageant for the repairman. It had been my parents’ first color television, a Zenith workhorse in a wooden case, complete with…
Read More
Appetites by Ann Levin
I was halfway through the show when I first saw the picture, hanging all alone on a wall. I knew I should hurry up, had other things to do. But something about the size and the color drew me…
Read More
The Word Disorder by Allison Field Bell
I insist I need a corset for under my dress. A wedding. My cousin’s. A purple strapless with a layer of chiffon. My mother is outside the dressing room. She asks if anything fits. I stare down the mirror.…
Read More
Here and There at the Lake by Janice Vis
Content Warning—sexual assault Along the western shores of Lake Ontario, the water splits the land and pools into a marshy inlet webbed with bike trails and bridges. I walk these paths every day, just wandering about, here and…
Read More
The Art of Crafting a Dating App Profile by Anna Chotlos
Do I “heart” this? My finger hovers over the outline of a heart beside a photo of a curly-haired woman grinning, her arms wrapped around two tan dogs. It’s a Friday night, a few months after I moved to…
Read More