selected for publication by Chet’la Sebree KP-Index 4.33 The room isn’t quiet but it issoft like too many blanketsor how the frozen sand lookedbeyond our towels hours beforewhere I sat with a boyI tried to love,the sky brightish and hazy, milkoozing through midnight’s pores,but I pretended not to see itbecause that evening, hours before,I told […]
selected for publication by Robin Marie MacArthur Orderly trunks of maritime pine forest plummet to marsh grass and beach sky where the narrow double lane becomes the Dauphin Island bridge. A brown pelican glides outside the car window as I coast onto the island proper, guiding me to this first Thanksgiving at Mama’s without Mama. […]
selected for publication by Craig Santos Perez sponsored by I-Regen at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign “Nahla,” the old woman says from the bed. “Nahla, it is past time. Kill me.” It is the same conversation they have had every day for the past six months. Nahla doesn’t answer this time. The generator-powered record player […]
selected for publication by Craig Santos Perez sponsored by I-Regen at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The second round of IVF failed exactly the same way the first did: the embryos simply stopped growing. Every other day the lab called with an update. Six embryos, then five, then three, then one. “There’s still one,” each […]
selected for publication by Debra Marquart sponsored by I-Regen at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Introduction by Guest Judge Debra Marquart This meticulously-researched piece of reportage begins by sounding an ominous bell about the state of the northern farm- and ranch-lands west of the Missouri River as the planet heads into fluctuations of climate that will […]
DW McKinney The Girl and the Haint But they say that Hairy Man is still deep in the swamps somewhere. Say he is waitin’ on the right time. -Virginia Hamilton, The People Could Fly The haint watched me from underneath my grandparents’ house. Her sanctum was cut from the concrete foundation and sealed with leftover […]
Marlene Olin Little People The mailbox sat on a freshly mowed lawn. Beyond the lawn, a handsome stone path led to a white clapboard house. Dormer windows. A bricked chimney. Neatly clipped hydrangeas hugged the porch while five acres of forest lunged in the rear waiting to be tamed. If you looked closely, as many […]
Chloie Piveral Feeding You What’s Left The trash is rank with the smell of decay; full of fluid-soaked chicken wrappers, moldy burger buns, rainbow-colored slick flecks of pungent tuna. My stomach growls, but I’ve lost my appetite. I made a list, fifteen pages long, trying to remember our last meal together. Tuna casserole? Burgers? Moroccan […]
Teresa Milbrodt Cookies I wasn’t hell bent on saving the world when I became an epidemiologist. I also hadn’t thought the job would involve so many tissues or cookies, but it did during those years when I worked the night shift at the mobile VD clinic. It was little more than a van with a […]
Lexi Pelle Ode to the Way We Move in the inpatient eating disorder program.Caroline G taps her foot to the tune ofpasta night. Sara takes four separate tripsto get a pair of scissors, two markers, a sheetof paper and Scotch tape from the craft basket,and Amanda, who signed herself in,just admitted she’s been doing cruncheson […]
