I imagined my giant Scrabble board and a pile of letter tiles. Extra vowels, too many U’s. Searching. Wanting to make sense of where I was at with my mom and where she was with herself. Do my memories get erased too when she erases hers?
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Dispatches from the Past Present, or Dick Clark's Face by Joe Bonomo
Dick Clark’s face revolving, revolving. This is no fever dream. 20 Years of Rock n’ Roll came packaged with a 'special bonus record,' a cardboard flexi disc emblazoned with, naturally, Clark’s cheery face. The record plays at 33 1/3 rpm, and in an unnerving design bug the spindle hole nailed Clark right between his eyes.
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Broom Rituals by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
This is how we broom. How we gather dust. A modified ritual of palimpsestic movement. Ceremony in cipher. How we move in the old ways that remain beyond a centuries-long violence.
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Float by Marcia Aldrich
I hardly dared open my mouth, even to say something innocuous like “Sure, I’m hungry. I could eat dinner.” My words might be analyzed to reveal something knotty, something sinister I didn’t know I felt but really ought to know I felt.
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It's Not About the Cat by Kerry Folan
I could not have explained this to my mother, but I was uneasy in those moments. The kitten was so tiny, and caring for her felt so serious. I tried in that first week to come up with the perfect pet name, one that would reflect her too-big coat and her shy meow, but I couldn’t. I think I felt unqualified for the job.
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A Glossary of White Traditions by Michael Bennett
Erasure: Not the 80’s brit-pop band, although we do enjoy “A Little Respect,” (not quite a cover of Aretha’s version, but a nice alternative).
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On Nerves by Karen Babine
AT SOME POINT, all nerves get old. The body cannot regenerate in ways it is accustomed to doing.
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Precious Cargo by Felicia Zamora
A honey bee knows the outcome of haste and yet, she is here, in the light. She lives fully, either always in fear of, or without fear of, death attached to her actions.
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Six Needles by Seth Sawyers
In the bottom of the third, he called back. He was slurring. He was somewhere downtown. He didn’t know where. He was sitting on concrete steps. He could see bushes. Where are you in relation to the big Bank of America building, I asked. He didn’t know. Concrete steps, he kept saying. Bushes.
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Dot by Lia Purpura
Empurpled, if caught in the gloaming, before the beam sharpens against true night and reddens the dot into super clarity.
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How Your Body Works by Jacqueline Ellis
The doctor is a wide, rectangular man with side-parted lank brown hair, black-framed glasses, and an untidy mustache. I sit across from him, next to Dan, on the shiny blue cushion of a dark-wood-colored chair. We are at a fertility clinic because we are trying to conceive a baby and our bodies do not work.
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Of Eagles, Goats, and Space Men by Patrick Madden
Which is to say that you can essay about anything, find some small hook in the overlooked or takenforgranted.
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The Madrid Conversations by Normando Hernàndez Gonzalez with Adam Braver and Molly Gessford, Translated By Cynthia Guardado
The simple act of having your rights to liberty and expression, I would say. The simple act of not being scared to say what you are thinking.
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Wolf Biter by Sarah Viren
When our habits deform our bodies, we can’t hide the proof of what we do.
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All These Things Engulfing Me by Joe Bonomo
"I can see the singer looking hopefully at the person with whom he’s speaking, seeing the kindness in their shining eyes, understanding the words they offer yet singing, in that eternal melancholia of melody, the real truth."
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Seasons by DW McKinney
She drinks to forget and drinks to feel different in her skin. She drinks to be someone else and drinks because she feels things she isn’t supposed to feel – because she is Black and Christian and because her parents raised her better.
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This I Know by Julie Woodward
My headlights are on. They carve small spaces into the night. I want to shed this skin and curl myself into their void. I want to tuck myself into their cold. I want to be consumed by their nothingness. I want to be swallowed whole, too.
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Up Brown Jug Creek by Catherine Halley
Of course, this isn’t the witch-thick forest you read about in a fairytale. I am surrounded by green, fast-growing trees and shrubs—buckthorn and black locust and honeysuckle—relentlessly spreading along the banks of the stream. The trunks bow out over the water and form a canopy of shade.
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What Does Your Halloween Costume Say About Your Gender?: Quiz Results By Jackie Domenus
You stand there silently, breathing candy breath into your mask until your face gets damp. Your best friends are cheerleaders, witches, fairies. But you’re just a structure of a person, an outline of a body, quiet and haunted.
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Drug Facts by Hillary Adams
"The first will make you numb, but you’ll be thin so everyone will tell you how good you look and that should equate happiness, or at least not wanting to die."
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