Jacqueline Goyette
On The Road to Muskegon, Michigan at 10 o’clock at Night
Just off the highway on the road to Muskegon, the road narrows, the street lights are few and far between and it is the middle of April, and my best friend Corrie and I are driving through the darkness like it is a thick fog, like this road, straight as it is, could lead us right to the edge of Lake Michigan, could drop us in if we kept going
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Ruby Hansen Murray
The Bison on the Move
Sunday, I drove to the little church at Stella,
since they were planning to protest for peace.
We were going to stand along the highway
by Germany Creek holding signs. I left early,
looking forward to being in the deep forest
around the little church up in the firs…
Aaron F. Schnore
Free HBO
The Jackie Gleason Bus Depot at dawn is no country for middle-aged women, but here I am. Twenty-two years in bus lighting. I’m tracing the wiring harness under a Nova 2024 when Aunt Carmen calls.
Uncle Tony is dead.
“It was fast,” Carmen sobs. Heart attack. Mets game on. Petting the cat.
Fast. Thank God. That’s how he lived….
Tiana Nobile
Flag Sijo
☰ | 건
Dear father, there are many ways to say I love you. I carry
your silence like a gwishin, wandering ghost without
a home. The air is crisp. I don’t believe in heaven anymore…
Georg Gerstenfeld
Breaking Glasses
I used to be Jewish.
I’ve never been religious, but I’m twenty-four and living alone in Frankfurt, so I seek comfort with my people for Yom Kippur.
To secure a ticket, I present my identity papers and answer security questions at a bullet-proof gatehouse. A more intensive secondary interrogation ensues inside a light-filled atrium. By the time they ask me to prove my Judaism, I’m sufficiently alienated to consider dropping my pants…
Mary Robbins
The ’90s Girl’s Guide to Losing Her Mother, According to the Movies
Wear a piece of your dead mother’s jewelry at all times.
It could be a silver cross on a chain of rope,
found tangled in a velvet hinged jewelry box.
Even if she never wore it, it’s what you’re looking for—
a lost-wax cast precious metal to panic over if misplaced…
Ada Pelonia
Horses
…He popped into my cubicle every night after that, the questioning frown easing into a pursed smile when he darted at my wrists tied to the laptop and spat random horse facts, like how they could sleep while standing to quickly fend off predators and that they value community, highly unlikely to roam or putter without a herd, isolation like a poison…
Elissa Matthews
I Blow Shit Up, It’s What I Do
I blasted a hole in a mountain’s flank
gouging a tunnel with charred stone walls
the width of a train
so I could escape…
Dianne R. Thomas
One Night in a Room Near the River
Nobody was high or anything. The strongest thing we had to drink was Constant Comment tea. Nasty stuff, but we thought it was what Leonard Cohen mentioned in that song Suzanne. And we were at Suzanne’s place and that was what she served us…
Beth Kanell
Panopticon
Don’t let me be the last to know. The sister-in-law up north kept saying
“I do not have Alzheimer’s” while the family hired caregivers, her car keys
long since taken away, the mail monitored in case she’s sending out
big checks again to scams that feature hungry children. A friend’s wife
woke up thinking there was a stranger in her bed…
Sally Toner
BASE Jumping
Watch the boys play grab-ass in the office, just like they did in high school.
Watch them pick on the low-hanging fruit, like they always do. The data analyst hired by the firm. At the office Christmas party, watch them press against him just a little longer in their boy game bear hugs and wrestling matches. Watch them call him a pussy when he declines a tequila shot. Ask him why he doesn’t quit but know the answer…
Karen Lozinski
Donating Plasma
The fat of land around New Orleans
where lighter fluid lingers as a missed
nebulizer pump where traffic is mightier
in its harried bitterness than all of the 405
where sleeveless t-shirts barking ham hock
arms demand you SMELL THE FREEDOM
where I have the nerve to ask what it smells like…