by Timothy Daniel Welch | Aug 5, 2015
The snow was falling on the beach and so the children gathered it into their hands. They mixed white sand and whiter frost into balls of light and threw them. I watched a girl’s eye drift naked among the tide. I watched the evening give way to the boulevard. And when...
by Ben Jackson | Jul 25, 2015
Another boy thinks his father dies each time he leaves home. Comes back a bony apparition on ESPN, long-eared effigy crucified in The Sun-Times. Another boy traces his father’s road trip, map in hand, before bed, whispering there he is, there he is. Down the hall his...
by Kateri Lanthier | Jul 20, 2015
But I followed instructions! Wring blood from a stone and use the drops as lip gloss. My new job is branding mascara. This one’s called “The Tracks of My Tears.” At the baby grand, my pearly whites dissolved to box-office poison. Sawzall, Adderall, bias-cut satin:...
by Nicolas Hundley | Jul 15, 2015
I own a spleen of transcendent variety. It serves as a beacon of bodily function. It sings & its cadences carry through my bones. It performs its spleenly tasks with such competence it elevates the performance of my other organs through its heavenly example. It is...
by Leah Johnson | Jun 25, 2015
Where the devil is a butcher in a white apron smeared with red. I am a bloody slab hanging on a hook. “You tell anyone, I’ll kill you,” he whispered, and my terror cleaved me in two, my body on its hands and knees in that cold with the butcher, my mind a white...
by January Gill O'Neil | Jun 15, 2015
A gray hoodie will not protect my son from rain, from the New England cold. I see the partial eclipse of his face as his head sinks into the half-dark and shades his eyes. Even in our quiet suburb with its unlocked doors, I fear for his safety—the darkest child on our...
