p. hodges adams 2024 Poetry Spring Contest Winner the first hand had square knuckles, like a boy; the second hand could hold a teacup neatly; the third hand was furious. i’m getting ahead of...
Rebecca Bernard They agree to meet on instant messenger at midnight. He’s usually on AIM at that hour, gifted with a computer in his bedroom, but she must sneak to the family computer, mute the...
Sara Burge down our street screaming, his voice chasing like a pissy wasp. Sometimes he’s an Apache helicopter. Sometimes Baby’s a mouse on a rug. Sometimes their fights are a riff on last...
Dawn Miller Jack arrives home from university even though it’s not yet spring break. He’s thinner than before he left, his elbows pointed like the sharp angles of the engineering caliper he...
Samuel Ellington And the barn on my left reads get right with God. There’s a gravel-road token that we can make home. Cut grass, gasoline, and I laughed when they told me the Lord is three...
Kath Richards 2024 Fiction Spring Contest Winner I’ve heard about dissociation, the way our minds can protect us from pain and trauma by removing us, at least mentally and momentarily, from a...
Cassie Flint Fancher After three days at sea eating fried food and on-demand ice cream, velcroing seasickness bracelets to our wrists, and wiping our lips on towels folded like swans, my mother...
Amita Basu It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that every human soul must be in want of another. Growing up, Vishrammi had this axiom drummed into her skull and never thought of challenging it....
Jane Feinsod where the head splits open and a goat crawls out. Like it knows something. Takes a tongue to water. Pisses toward Nebraska. Curls into a bushel of honeysuckle. Suspects nothing,...
Rebecca Weil He was there all night in his gray donkey self, standing beside the covered body of his friend while the snow fell. Coyotes yipped from the hills but stayed back. Deer came through, and...