Floaters by Kelle Groom
Dark birds fly from my eyes. Disappear. Where do the kittens come from? We don’t have a cat. Just kittens lumped together like a single entity. A litter. In a box a blanket a bag on the passenger seat?…
Tag: Imagery
Canines by Jona Whipple
She says go like this and bares her teeth at me, lips pulled back. All the other girls lean in to see inside my mouth, too close. I smell the leather of their shoes, but I don’t flinch. Jagged,…
The Two Denvers by Rebecca Starks
The first thing they had to do was name us, as if we were rescues or strays. As if they would need a way to gossip about us, to get our attention. We mostly did not like our new…
The Little List of Boys and Men Who Vanished by Claudia Monpere
Number one had cerulean blue eyes and haloed heat as we danced at Sadie Hawkins in our matching flannel shirts and he wandered night stairs and stars almost as stoned as his mother and strummed “Dust in the Wind”…
Sweet Knife by Dana Brewer Harris
When Ford made love to Calla, she felt something in him fight. It wasn’t against her ugliness. That matter was settled business, though Calla, in her youth, had held onto the idea that she was a winter-apple sort of…
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…
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…
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…
Tatuajes by Rubén Degollado
Indiana, in our cold one-car garage, motes of dust falling sideways, the sunlight diffused by the snow covering the ground outside, and we watched Apá working the punching bag, his untaped fists flashing with each swing. Behind my brother…
On Crafting the Memoir in Pieces
By Beth Kephart • The writer of the memoir in pieces is an assembly artist—a hunter, a gatherer, an arranger, a culler, a keeper. They are not at work on a collection of essays loosely bound by voice, style,…