CREATIVE NONFICTION
This Shattering by Wiam El-Tamami
just before dawn I. It started in the daytime, my sister says, I remember the light. We were watching TV. Mama and Baba were in their room, asleep. We heard noises that sounded like fireworks. It happened at…
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“When Doves Cry” by Anne Panning
Prince tipped extravagantly. He’d leave $100 bills tucked under the ketchup. He did not condescend, but would wiggle his little fanny all the way out the door. The limos gobbled him up and deposited him at Paisley Park. Lavender…
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How We Carry the Weight of It by Will McMillan
We arrive in the raspberry fields when it’s dark. It’s dark when we pile out of our secondhand pickup. My father, my mother. My brother and me. It’s dark when we start walking the rutted, sopping dirt road that…
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For Rent by Rosa Kwon Easton
You fluff the white rice for lunch. Aroma of fermented soybean paste stew wafts in the air. Gazing out the open window, you tense. You slap the rice paddle on the counter and rush outside, charging headfirst across the…
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Gordon Bishop by Naomi Melati Bishop
Gordon Bishop, fifty-six, is a one-eyed, one-legged, one-breasted single father. He is a native New Yorker who shares an antique-filled one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with his teenage daughter. Every night, Gordon sits at his desk wearing tighty-whities and…
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Split Ends by Rowan McCandless
When my mother died, I inherited a sizeable goldenrod-coloured envelope; inside, I discovered birthday cards given to me from family members throughout my childhood, handmade get-well cards crafted by classmates upon the occasion of having one of several surgeries…
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The Babysitter by Andrew Borneman
“My memory serves me far too well.” —George Michael 1979 I’ve heard the story a hundred times. Fourteen phone call attempts before my mother snagged my brother’s first babysitter, Sarah, a quick-witted high school sophomore. She showed up from…
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Four Words Whispered on a Smoky Field by Baņuta Rubess
BAŅUTA RUBESS pioneered feminist theatre and contemporary opera to national renown in Canada and Latvia. She has lived in four countries and writes in two languages. She has written plays, libretti, radio drama, television biopics, stories, and…
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On Possessing a Body by Lotte Mitchell Reford
Content Warning—disordered eating I At night, I find myself lying in bed near bursting with memory, as if something gone could still rip through me and flower. And yes I let myself get hungrier. It feels impossible to…
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What I Do and Don’t Remember from the Days and Nights of Endlessly Smoking Crack and Shooting Heroin by Christian Bodney
It’s all a blur. It can be separated into two five-year periods: using alone and using with Haley. Haley had piercings everywhere: the bridge of her nose, her septum, her nipples, her belly button. She had stretched lobes—one had…
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