by Abigail Cain Mother still doesn’t know about the cans of saliva-soaked scabs despite their five-year presence beneath my bed. When I was fifteen, I climbed the oak tree in the backyard. The branches of the tree rested gently on the roof of the old shed where we stored the…
by Abigail Cain Mother still doesn’t know about the cans of saliva-soaked scabs despite their five-year presence beneath my bed. When I was fifteen, I climbed the oak tree in the backyard. The branches of the tree rested gently on the roof of the old shed where we stored the…
by Natalia Ortiz Lopez Elisa del Valle walked into town with clean brown shoes and splintered feet. She came from a region in South America whose name English speakers couldn’t spell or pronounce correctly, much to her relief. She liked that nobody could remind her of home. Leaving had meant…
by Amy Parker “I am a writer, not an author,” I explained. “Oh—what do you write?” My voice began to shake as I tried to explain—nothing. Every time this question is raised, I clam up. Normally a well-spoken individual, I cringe inside as my words get twisted up in my…
by Emily Brochu By October, the crows returned. They always did. They came with the cold wind—black flocks swirling above the cul-de-sac like storm clouds too dark for the sky to bear. The air grew heavy when they came, thick with the scent of wet earth and smoke. They clung…
by Ivan de Monbrison The mountain is split in two. On the other side, there’s a path. It winds between the hills. At the end of the path, there’s a burnt-out cross. The sun has been nailed to the sky. Your hand is bleeding from your nails, but you’re not…
by Hayley Russell I come from the hush of cold mornings, the kind where silence grows like frost along the edges of windows thin, breakable, waiting for light. My mother’s voice cracked open rooms, a stormfront gathering in the doorframe, yet she’d pause, let the hinges breathe, and show me how to listen for smaller truths: the house exhaling after…
by Richard Downing “Too creepy for me, Shipley . . . I’m gone.” Once again, Shipley’s face had become a silent movie, a spliced choreography of twists, twitches, and tics, eyes, nose, and mouth unstuck actors blinking, pinching, and pursing from frame to frame. And his face would stay that way until he could summon that one exhaustive snort from an unpinched nose that offered release. His eyelids would then slow, modulate, his nose cease flaring and pinching, flaring and pinching, his grimace-lined lips smooth then part…
by Cainhurst As a kid I cultivated the habit of reading the same poem every morning before going to school. The other kids remained unimpressed by the lines that fell from the burning tip of my tongue, they were only a bit dazzled by my aggressive utterance, they didn’t even know what a poem was. I started then to relish the high solitude poetry seemed to give…
by Valerie Logel The day after my twenty-first birthday, I was driving home from a family dinner with the man who would later become my abusive ex in the passenger seat. The radio played softly, and we were talking about plans for the rest of my birthday celebration. It was supposed to…
by Anna Elizabeth These foothills are too steep For someone like me to climb. And so I lock the doors, And I throw the key away. Let the world spin Without me for a while. Let me cower Under these sheets. Let me learn to breathe When I am suffocating. Exile me to lands Where the speechless speak. Maybe then, I…