Always with You by Robert Maynor
Document I: Letter from S. Bethany Dear Father Sister, Mother, Lover who art in Heaven Home, Hell, Hotel, Hospital When you find this, please: Load me like a bullet in the chamber of your gun. Lay me by your…
Tag: Imagery
Veil of the Cross by Caitlin Rae Taylor
We wanted to feed the bees. We wanted this privilege every year, but only when we were blanketed safely in the hills. We wanted something small and threatening to need us, so we could decide whether it deserved our…
The Sluagh by Kendra M. Pintor
You’re looking through the hole in your father’s shoulder like it’s a spyglass. Or a kaleidoscope. Except, it isn’t either of those things. It’s a long, dark tunnel, and the other side isn’t magnified or broken into crystal fragments.…
Blackbird Dreams by Meg LeDuc
Content Warnings—mental illness, suicidal ideation Close to midnight, I approach the Michigan-Ohio border, headlights flashing around me like starry pinpricks in the vast, dark tunnel along southbound I-75. It’s November 2015—a cold, clear-heaven night—and I’m clocking ninety miles per…
This Century, the Last by Kristine Langley Mahler
Everyone is coughing behind a mask. The papers warn that the only way to avoid the sweeping sickness is to limit contact, but kids are still playing together in the streets because October in Cloquet, Minnesota is rarely this…
Antediluvian Animals by Keely O’Connell
The plane lands in the one hour of tilted midday light that January sees daily. I step down onto the icy runway, and my new principal throws my bag into the bed of a red pickup. I climb in…
Buoyancy by Chloe N. Clark
I carry her in my fingertips when I’m far from home. Feeling the heat of her skin if I press thumb and index finger together hard enough. I can trick myself into her softness if I brush my thumb…
Father/Figure by Andrea Avery
1. Ambigram In isolation, I mark time by the movement of sunlight across my walls and floors. I awake each morning to the desert sun blazing through the east-facing back door. The sun conspires with the automatic pool cleaner…
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…
Cities and Desire by Hart L’Ecuyer
Inspired by Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino—a story of my life Perhaps the farmland becomes industrial yards with barbed wire fences, and then the barbed wire fences become concrete retaining walls covered in graffiti, and you are there.…
