Perhaps their bodies sensed the heartache ahead, the disappointment that waited—that they couldn’t hold onto this version of reality. So they let go of it. All over the theater floor.
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Of Places and Passports by Shazia Rahman
Let me pledge allegiance to the planet. Let me list all the places I love on a passport that actually represents my sense of belonging and identity.
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Daddy by Alex Ebel
Pacing the halls of my house in a pair of penny loafers so dusty they might have been robbed from a grave, I counted on trembling fingers all the ways my night could unfold.
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Redress by Megan Sweeney
To redress: to remedy or set right; to relieve from distress; to make fair and equal; to compensate for wrong or loss. From Anglo-French redresser: to set upright, restore, set straight.
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Where I Was From by Steven Moore - Winner of the Bradley & Stucky-French Prize
I live in a college town in western Oregon and lately people here have been talking about their small-town Midwestern upbringing like it was a war they barely survived.
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Photo of Dr. Harris Mirkin
The Incomplete By Dylan McGonigle
It was at the end of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times that I'm pretty sure I heard Harris Mirkin crying.
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Primum Non Nocere: First, Do No Harm by Michael Bishop
Consider for a moment the end of your life.
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Black Widow Spider by Sherry Shahan
I stood in the bathroom where they were strongest, inhaling sprays, sticks, and creams, wondering if my parents even liked each other.
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Panic Attack by Beth Kephart
There is security camera proof of where and how my father fell. The evidence shows that there was no daughter beside him.
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Reconsider the Lobster by Kathryn Gougelet
The black eyes of one of the biggest ones swiveled, probing the air for information about this sterile fluorescent place. Its eyes swiveled in our direction. Fisherman and writers: we were a human blur.
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Dear Daughters, Dear Linda: Essays from 'Terrible Crystals' by Victoria Chang
Saying things others want to hear is easy for an immigrant’s child because language is theatrical.
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Is it Me?, or Withering Sadness, Self-pity, Loneliness, Abandonment, Spiritual Desperation, the Loss of Romance, of Love and of Childhood as well as the more obvious Rage and Frustration by Joe Bonomo
The story of one’s adolescence, choked with romantic notions, wordless dreams far more exciting than tedious daily life, is difficult to tell with a clear beginning-middle-end. And I think Townshend knew that.
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Only Obligation by Kathryn Waring
Obligation, defined as: “an act to which a person is morally or legally bound.” Or, as a verb: “to make someone indebted by conferring a kindness.”
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Neural Pathways to Love by Jody Keisner
Time plus love equals ordinary disappointments, which as it turns out, has been enough to harm the good feelings and brain reactions Jon and I used to have for one another.
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Leatherface by Carol Claassen
“In the past two years she’s known him, he’s told her almost everything about the movie. No surprises. She knows how it ends.”
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Home by David L. Ulin
“Still, what else does New York provoke but memory — for me, anyway, who hasn’t lived here for more years than my children have been alive?”
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The Last Missouri Aspens by Annie Sand
I glanced at the photograph: a teardrop shape, the size of my palm, its edges toothed with soft points curving up from stem to tip, a yellow aspen leaf. Bigtooth aspens are common in Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but not in Missouri, where differences in climate and soil hem their natural range. I’d been told that somewhere in Adair County, in a nature preserve called Big Creek, was the last stand of bigtooth aspen known to exist in the state. When I’d found out, I’d immediately called my mother.
“I’ve got your trees,” I told her.
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Writing Instructions for Non-Native Speakers by Robert Anthony Siegel
We are placed in a guest house on campus, a sort of rotting cottage out of a folk tale, hidden in a world of its own behind a ten-foot wall of bamboo and flowering bushes. I sprawl on the bed, staring at the water stains on the ceiling, sweating. I’ve never experienced jet lag this intense.
Read MoreWe, Little Griefs by Brit Barnhouse
Who knew sand could inspire We
baked in the sun I climbed into caves
On Choosing Ignorance by Kara Vernor
Growing up in a liberal, college town, I frequented the art house theater where I stood in the ticket line alongside college students with labret piercings and grey-haired white couples and what I assumed to be serious environmentalists in thin-rimmed glasses and fleece outerwear.
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