by Caitlyn Burry “How to Eat a Pomegranate’” placed first in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2025 Fall Fiction Contest. Red things stain quickly; remember to handle them with care. STEP 1: Select Your Fruit When selecting the perfect pomegranate, it’s best to feel the weight first. Hold the fruit in…
by Rowan Tate I Suspect That Moths and Regret share a language no one translates. Grief has poor timing and excellent posture; I am learning to walk without finishing the sentence. I am not who I meant to become, but the bread still rises.
by Jim Tilley We are used to white birches in the forest growing straight and tall, but I passed by one in a yard, bent and twisted, branches curled downward to the ground before rising again, as if it had suffered too many ice storms and never recovered. Beside it, a lush sugar maple grown taller, dominating the…
by Sam Hendrian A Saturday afternoon comprised Of coupon compromises Among stockroom on-the-clockers Who wish people knew how to read hours of operation. Lingerie shops compete To see who can best fetishize denim And which A-list actress turned B-list model Can master that “I don’t care” stare. Public displays of affection By eighth-grade graduates Who will still laugh…
by Mike O’Brien Despite the wild wind, I will clingWhen all that’s around meis losing its grip,being torn from its mooringsand carried awayin madness and mayhemto God alone knows Despite the wild wind, I will cling,When no one can hear meover the bluster,the terrible creakingthe clanking and crackingas what was…
by Sam Hendrian Needed to cut her nails For three weeks now But also needed a new clipper And didn’t want to waste the dough. Sat on the curb outside of Ralph’s Dreaming of the afterlife Not caring if it was heaven or hell Since either way she wouldn’t have to dream anymore. Rebuilt her social…
by Michael Sandler I usually begin with almond milk(from orchards siphoning the Colorado?)then plunk in yoghurt, banana, a few berriespossibly picked by migrants—I’ve seen them stoopedand wish there was a way of thanking themalso for the kale-spinach-Swiss chard mixof nutrients few of us get enough of,helping me vaunt the goodness…
by Chris Dungey After another successful visit to the Presbyterian rummage sale, I have to wonder—who in all the Congregation is built so much like me that their castoff coats fit perfectly, year after year? Will he spot me one day, out of my choir robe, wearing his discarded garment. Hey, I had one like that!…
by David Armand Most of my childhood I lived in a singlewide trailer,which was in the middle of a clearing in the woodsjust north of a little town in Folsom, Louisiana. But it wasn’t even a town. It was a village,and everyone there was just as poor as we were….
by D.R. James You’d like to move on beyond mean memory,skirt that peopled, hollow squalor, pack upyour numerous mind encampments whose smokycook fires now flicker, now flare on this or thatnostalgic hillside—sometimes like codedreminders, sometimes like brash blazes arousinganything but a simpering gratitudefor a brainscape stippled with so-called love.But then…
by William Heath I remember Aunt Hazel’s two-story wooden farmhouse by the roadside, the flat fields of northwestern Ohio stretching out in all directions until they hit a tree line left on purpose to cut down on the wind. The barns are a short walk from the house, and a rooster commands the area where we…