by Susan Gaissert | Sep 20, 2014
The living room was small and immaculately clean. From my place on the carpet, I could see a few tiny crumbs from the crackers I had eaten earlier, but that was because Mommy hadn’t done today’s vacuuming yet. Soon, there would be no evidence that anyone had eaten a...
by Gretchen Vanwormer | Sep 15, 2014
Fucking wayward duck. It’s outside the Metro station at Farragut North, where I’m meeting my friend Haley. The bird is so close I can see the concrete beneath its delicate and transparent webbing. It’s rush hour in DC, and the duck keeps waddling out into rapids of...
by Christopher Shaw | Aug 30, 2014
1. In 1991 archeologist Chris Henshilwood dug an oblong piece of ochre small enough to fit in the hand out of the 77,000-year-old level of Blombos Cave, on the coast of South Africa east of Cape Town and near the southernmost point of the continent. The cave mouth had...
by Jonathan Mack | Jun 18, 2014
When I was a child I believed the farm where I grew up was a living being. As a living being, it had a heart. The location of the heart was obvious to me, though it seemed I was the only one who knew. I didn’t tell anyone. I went to visit the heart, from time to time,...
by Kevin Oderman | May 2, 2014
It’s grey hair on the pillow now. Night owl, I inhabit a still house, keeping quiet, not wanting to disturb my sleeping wife. Even for me, awake, such hours have the feel of dreams. A pool of light under my lamp where I sit reading, half-lit hallways and stairwells,...
by Eric Tran | Apr 24, 2014
The Vietnamese were born from a goddess from the heavens and a dragon from the waters. The dragon-father confessed to the goddess-mother, I am from the dragons, you are from the faeries. Fire and water cannot together live in harmony. Fifty of their sons followed...
