Ephraim Scott Sommers Cryin’ Bryan I’m telling Michelle I saw the careening, rosy Hondascoop up Bryan at the ankles, that I saw his head diveinto a spiderweb on the windshield,how his body cartwheeled Olympic-like aroundthe air and his skateboard spun off and got lostbeneath some car in the Food 4 Less parking lot,and I’m telling […]
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Ellene Glenn Moore – 1989
Ellene Glenn Moore 1989 I tell you this: the night before I was born my mama sent my waning daddy and two brothers down the street, dark elms pressing open the brick sidewalks from below, to the capitol building to watch the fireworks. Peace for Mama, and her big bellyful of me. But lights busted […]
Brock Jones – Rogue Memories and Arkansas
Brock Jones Rogue Memories Curator of the National Archive of Collective Memory and War Memorabilia called with concerns about some of my war story facts, dates and names and other details his office had been trying to independently verify for some time now. A number of incongruities in my stories have caused uncertainty in certain circles as to whether or not […]
Peter Kispert – Puncture
Peter Kispert Puncture “Blue? Blue looks sort of like a healing black,” I say, filling two glasses with water in the sink. Clark is colorblind, or so he’s telling me. It is three forty-five on a Sunday morning, two weeks to the day since my mother passed, and he’s bleeding on my floor, brown dots […]
Jenny Xie – The Director
Jenny Xie The Director The first time I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s, my father walked in front of the screen and announced that he and Mama were getting a divorce. I was to join her in Luo San Ji, California, where she’d been working as a restaurant hostess for the past two years. “Dui bu qi,” he […]
Caleb True – Dervish
Caleb True Dervish Andy was such a fascinating sort of attraction. Enigmatic. No boys knew her, almost no girls. Andy did have one friend who, after proving her authenticity as a friend and not just a snoop for the rest of us, learned that Andy made her own jewelry, electric jewelry, rewired Christmas […]
Bryan Washington – Jack
Bryan Washington Jack Jackie got sick like the rest of us, back before we knew what to call it. True story. I hadn’t started coughing yet, but that didn’t mean I’d gotten off; a lot of people didn’t even sneeze. They just lived their lives until they woke up, wet. Stinking of rotten fruit. Our […]
Janelle DolRayne – Self-portrait as painter and sitter
Janelle DolRayne Self-portrait as painter and sitter A steel blue light flickers in a roomwhere I sit for myself. The painter and sitter just got done arguing—No, I’m the freak. The sitter positions herself in the way we both prefer,yet neither will say. Have you seen the palette I’ve picked for you?the painter continues, Eggshell slip of a […]
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Paul Asta – Lullaby for the Wandering Child
Paul Asta Lullaby for the Wandering Child Tell him he was born a goldfishand you called him marmalade,because his tail fin reminded you of your grandmother’s butter knifeinserted and spun about the jar,which she held with a loose grip and trembling hands, and it wasn’tthe mess afterwards that worried you,it was the pouring and the […]
David Winter – White Queen’s Blues
David Winter White Queen’s Blues Mr. Pat Water’s Very Smart Club My-O-My, known for its “female impersonators,” permitted only white patrons and performers for most of its history. If I could dance to your work song, hummed as sun splitsshadow from silt each morning, I’d have the whole quarterswooning. But a lady mustn’t soil her […]
