By Peter Kline
“Why don’t we value them when they’re alive?”
“Why don’t we value ourselves?”
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Going, Going, Gone
By Amy Marques
“I hear myself say they are gone. Even as I say it, I know I am wrong. Is anyone ever truly gone?”
Honest
By Amy Marques
“The last time she lied was a minute ago. She hasn’t told the truth in years. Her tongue wraps itself around assurances of happiness with no repentances, she is independent, able, fine, fine, fine.”
Television, Explained
By Anthony Varallo
“The main television was in the family room. Usually the main television was large, in comparison to other televisions around the house, say, a twelve-inch black and white atop a kitchen counter, or, in some luckier, more fortunate homes, a fourteen-inch color console injecting a guest bedroom with blue-green light.”
Cinders: A Love Story
By Keith Hood
“Perhaps we should not have done it. He’s been sitting in the closet waiting for her since 1993. His cardboard-colored container resembling an oversized Chinese take-out box with the requisite thin metal handle.”
Bess Recalls the Great Depression
By Kathryn Silver-Hajo
She paints WPA-inspired scenes of fishermen and farm hands, the frame shop on Flatbush a ruckus of wood and wire, tools and nails.
Since The Moon Went Away
By Kathryn Silver-Hajo
When Corinne feels on top of her game, she’s a tangerine-stripe cat strutting around the neighborhood, taking in the scents.
Tumbling
By Kathryn Silver-Hajo
When Norm started to tumble, one by one his friends fell away. Mister Storm Cloud, some said.
Permanence
By Phebe Jewell
For once, the company of young men delights Dorothy. JB nods as Dorothy describes what she wants: the outline of a heron just taking flight, wings raised, beak pointing toward its destination.
When They Find Him
By Andrea Damic
Full Moon beacons above a silhouette hiding in the dark. She welcomes the silence. Ineffable relief.
Sundog at My Window on a Midwestern Winter’s Afternoon
By Jay Summer
Glistening white sunlight bounds through my window, bouncing across the wooden floor like a pristine and puffed up Bichon Frise parading across the room with such pomp, you’re tempted to believe they understand the concept of “best in show.”
So Many
By Ben Roth
We’re sitting on the stoop late one afternoon when a guy walks by with a dog. “Look at this asshole,” my friend says to me.
Cleaning House
By Bill Merklee
Months after the accident, we’re clearing out your house. It’s a daunting task for such a small place. Books everywhere. Endless vinyl but no turntable. Shelves of souvenirs from the same places as the stickers on the back of your charred and crumpled Jetta.
Hive
By Kelli Short Borges
Mandy says she’s queen of seventh grade and we’re her workers and she “ha ha ha’s,” but her eyes flash venom and it’s annoying because Mandy’s the new girl and already thinks she’s royalty but she’s so pretty that we whirr around her…
If It Is Ever Summertime Again
By Thomas O’Connell
It is the raft that you inflated for our daughter to float upon, drifting around the clubhouse pool. The raft is the last place where your breath remains.
Candy Loving
By Len Kuntz
We were trailer park kids who stole things. Middling shit. Squirt guns. Bazooka Joe. Saltwater taffy. Licorice. Playboy magazine. Gordie was always sore. His dad tooled belts. Used them on Gordie. Buckle end to the back and shoulders. My dad was still doing years in Walla Walla. DWI. Vehicular Homicide.
Seeds of Stars
By Richard Stimac
Willa’s older brother set a blanket out in the backyard. His name was William, but people called him Billy. Willa’s full name was Willamina.
Listening
By Diane Payne
You waken to the sound of an owl hooting, two cats screeching, and the sound of humans crying, their grief whirling into the eternity of nocturnal voices reaching out…
Pit Stop
By Mikki Aronoff
She cuts the engine and swings down from the cab like a spider monkey flying through rainforest. She thrives on heights, but she’s running out of diesel and there’s that hot date with a trapezist seven exits away.
Things That Have Fallen
By Mikki Aronoff
The wind blew and the door splintered. She squeezed you out fresh as a lemon, just in time for Jeopardy. The only time they took your picture, it was a cold day in December.
Dear Mathilde
By Mikki Aronoff
At dusk on the last day of second grade, we stopped doing wheelies in the empty lot down the street to watch Mathilde, rigid on the sidewalk as her mother shoved a suitcase into the trunk of someone’s car. Her mother never turned around. Never waved goodbye.
Tijuana
By Victoria Ballesteros
“In dreams, I glide past borders and through concrete doors to reach places I have never left. I fly over green picket fences and bougainvillea trees adorned with slivers of the past.”
A Growing Collection of Oddities
By Meg Pokrass
At the Japanese lantern festival, the Spinster and I hip-bump in, psyched about whatever people think of us, two zaps of purple in life’s crazy shuffle, licking wasabi from our lips, ignoring each other’s hair, unpedicured or manicured, candid about our hard-earned frumpiness.