Nikki Barnhart From our vantage point on the bleachers, we watched them. We sat shivering, frozen still, in polyblend short-shorts and tee-shirts knotted—coquettishly, we let ourselves believe—at...
Wendy BooydeGraaff Cracked Fake Leather Sit on the bar stool for the zillionth time, eating the spaghetti and meatless balls (tofu? seitan? you still can’t get it straight after three years) your...
Ellie Cheng They say they can’t find your son when you wake up. Edward, you try to say. Edward David Solomon when he’s running away from bathtime in his Spiderman undies, Eddie for...
Melissa Darcey Hall We meet on the first night. Sandy-eyed, thirsty, and half awake, I tip-toe to the kitchen, careful not to wake Wesley, and there she is, sitting at the kitchen table painting her...
Kenneth Jakubas I’m giving specific instructions in my will that I be buried with items from one year in my life. Being a nostalgic person, I chose the twentieth year. I wanted all of 2009 in...
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...