Maureen Alsop
Four Latitudes North The Tropic of Capricorn
…And already the guests, an omen, ease into the sea. Their ships trace the waves and like a seance in reverse, the dead call me into their terrain: pastures, plains, vesper points at sunset…
Dan Garner
The Cape
There’s a server at Gringo George’s Pie House in Sioux City who sprinkles broken glass on a plate of scrambled eggs and eats it to amuse the truck drivers who stop by the diner. Her name is Luanne Smithers. No one knows how or why she does it in terms of science or rationale. The truckers get a good laugh and tip her well…
Beth Kanter
Pinned to My Heart
A young woman wearing my deceased grandmother’s favorite housecoat filled in for my acupuncturist today. She ushered me into a pale yellow treatment room, lit a Pine-Sol scented candle, and cleaned my skin with individually wrapped alcohol wipes she kept in her bra strap…
Christian David Loeffler
A Longing for Wet Feet
…I asked my mom if Jesus was happy. I asked her if he wanted to be some great sacrifice for all of humanity, or if he was just forced to do it, like there were no other options.
Mom told me to say the prayer so we could eat. I frowned as gravy rolled over my mashed potatoes. I always liked it when the gravy soaked in…
Liz Rosen
Death Notices by Text Thread
…This was how Emily and I marked history. It was how we could talk to each other across the time and space before we met in A.A. meetings. The nostalgia made no sense, our teen years having been filled with bullies and aborted love affairs. But we both had thrilled at the juddering image of the MTV rocket…
R. P. Singletary
(A chilly proud) south for once
ATLANTA – Never been long to southeastern U.S. for anything fun, real, red-blooded. Read Roots, watched Gone with the Wind, flown through the region’s biggest – world’s busiest airport, but never sojourned in the city proper, so he felt he done right once planned a getaway back first of year after their umpteenth fight, his own southern belle breaking her tenor, their screams apart at the seams…
Suzy Eynon
Separate
Camina believes in the dim morning light that the child’s tent under the Christmas tree is Mother Mary kneeling. That’s the first place her head goes when she mistakes the shape of things. She adds flourishes of color with fluorescent yellow highlighter to her first Bible. Attends church with her mother and asks why her father doesn’t have to join them…
Eirene Gentle
Madelaine
Inside woods split by lightning, Madelaine with the long name. Madelaine with the rich girl name, the white girl name, the name of the ghost in the trees after she disappeared. Resurrected on ashy, rain-warped posters, round-face stare between the words missing and person. Girl in the gap. Girl turned memory…
Eleanor Levine
The Lemon and the Therapist
My therapist will never read this. She does not believe in reading things that I write. I can read my stuff to her over the phone, which is how we conduct our sessions, but she won’t buy my books.
I had a therapist once who broke all “boundaries” and came to see me in the hospital and at my book launch. When he asked to attend my birthday dinner, I said no…
rob mclennan
All I Know About Tacoma Washington
…When one thinks of the Pacific Northwest, one thinks of something quirky, left-wing. Peaceful, yet politically charged. One imagines a dream-scape. How long might you sit in your car, driving, during an average day? During a week? During a year?
There are lives on the verge of taking off, of taking flight. Of plummeting, exploding outright, or collapsing…
Pamela Schmid
Together Again One Day
Best Friend says she can’t recall the last time she tweezed her eyebrows or even thought about doing it, that her eyebrows have turned into fuzzy caterpillars.
Just saying this feels like some kind of moral victory, she tells you with a conspiratorial wink, like I’m remembering how I used to be in the Before Times….
Jessica Van Dessel
Forever
…The old man manages to convey, without movement or eye contact, that he has noticed your interest and might allow himself to be drawn into conversation should you care to make the effort, and so, thinking, what the heck, you walk over and handle one of the bags. It is indeed empty…