Robin Babb “Utopia is uninhabitable. As soon as we reach it, it ceases to be utopia. As evidence of this sad but ineluctable fact, may I point out that we in this room, here and now, are inhabiting...
Linette Marie Allen Peering from the window of my train, I see not murder — fat and juicy murder, but wild collards growing woke, posh and unpicked, green as pistachio. I pop a few in horror —...
Steven Harvey Like eagle rounding out the morning/ Inside us./ We pray that it will be done/ In beauty./ In beauty.—Joy Harjo I’ve never seen an eagle rounding out the morning inside me, but I...
Keegan Lawler In the woods of North Idaho, black bears and velvet-antlered moose didn’t scare you as much as wood ticks did. Stories you’d heard of ticks gone fat with blood, hiding in hairlines...
Abigail Myers When it became clear that the pregnancy wasn’t viable, the doctor asked what my holiday plans were, a banal question suddenly loaded with urgency; and when I told her, she simply...
Shilo Niziolek “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together today to look into the face of the river.” — Mary Ruefle The week-long heat wave has finally broken, but before it broke, I forced...
Beneth Goldschmidt-Sauer I had a lucky shirt I wore the whole time. I took it off only to sleep and to wash it in the laundry room at the hotel, where the jungly humidity and the smells from the...
Aida Zilelian “Don’t bother your mother this morning,” my grandmother Shaké said. She had her back turned to us, rummaging for items in the refrigerator. My sister Alice and I sat at the...
Lauren Rhoades I never liked the Solomon story. You know the one. Two women come to the wise King Solomon, both claiming to be the mother of the same baby. King Solomon tells the women that since...
