If you forget me, remember the Italian ice we shared in Venice, leaning over a parapet. I believe it was sour apple. Now, you pluck a single tulip from the pixelated blizzard, expecting from me, a Pavlovian response. In the absence of stimulus, my mind returns to a paradisiacal state, where I am continually piqued,…
I remember the lure of seed, the outstretched hand begging me to nest beside him in bed during those first nights, the pecks, the treats, the ecstasy of new love swelling inside my breast right before everything changed. Some nights, it’s just once, a soft blow that stings for an instant, but doesn’t leave a…
It’s an art to suck the marrow from a bone, a woman who lived through poverty once said to me. My own debt-to-income ratio drives me to drink, in the afternoon, and at night. The neon strobe lights at our favorite club illuminate your face, before it shutters and closes off. In the end, happiness…
He sits in the hallway reading one of those magazines about famous military campaigns, all the grand deeds of valor and futility. He is a father, he is a son, jaws of a hungry animal. A storm passes to the west, cutting then restoring our slim cord of light. Hard rain on the pavement, heard…
In fiction, our winner is Anne de Marcken for her story “Foil.” Of her story, fiction judge Carmen Maria Machado said, “I couldn’t get enough of this story, its beauty and strangeness, the way it turned in on itself over and over again. So many moments and sentences quickened something inside me—gorgeous. I loved how…
Our daughter never puts her mind on display Like a jewel too precious to own, or an animal Too wild to cage. At church she’s able to sit still, But then for weeks rattles off the names of poisonous Snakes and admonishes us that knowledge lies Only outside of Creation. She stops playing in the…
So quiet you can hear the Archer drawing his bow, the Moon powdering her face, the elegant axle of creation turning. A tiny iridescent frog appeared on the lip of the toilet bowl this morning as if waiting to receive us. He seemed to be the king of something yet made no protest as we…
A chain of crushed nouns has upended my mind. It’s o.k. It’s all right, pretended my mind. A quick cut. A small nick. A surgical touch. O Penthidine, Tramadol, so splendid my mind! Ram drew back the string of King Janak’s great bow, Sita shot through the lifetimes and tended my mind. …
Little brother drinks his neon sadness liquid—no one has a healthy relationship with Mountain Dew. Large, no ice. That means more pop for his buck. Who knows if he enjoys the stuff anymore. I think it’s less about savoring those extra sips and more about putting off the empty cup, that undrinkable last bit…
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