We are the flowers who remember ice. We grew beside the glacier as it drew away, groaning. Raw stone lay broken, moss grew thick, then we could use it. That terrain longed for us—soil shallow, stone strong, and our roots twining deep even as the glacier still moved...
From the back porch, they swore, young parents, they had nothing to fear. The moment they’d thought they’d been waiting for: summer stars, sleeping toddler, river slapping the seawall at the bottom of the yard. Case numbers statewide dropping for weeks, an e-mail from...
Yung-Su brings a live dove, a Eurasian Collared with dust-brown wings and a black nape, holding it in both of his hands like a carton of eggs. Beats the hell out of Ever's "With Deepest Sympathy" card and my bouquet of stargazer lilies, stained pale pink inside,...
So I forget the tanks rolling over the wheat fields towards my house, and now I am on my ninth loaf. I knead the dough. Before he left, I kneaded my husband’s shoulders to loosen the knots. I will carry on — kneading, shaping, baking. At the open window, his cat...
You carry Grandma’s finger in a velvet purse. It’s your turn. Tess doesn’t have a chance of pocketing it now she’s wetting the bed again. Squeezing the smooth pelt, rolling your thumb over Grandma’s little bones, your breathing quells. In spelling tests, when big kids...
The flock scattered across the river at the sight of him, and he watched, drooling—a bony shadow in the reeds—as the big rams shielded their wives and tiny lambs, as yearlings offered wobbling elders their strong shoulders. The wolf had not eaten in a month, but he...
Trigonometry was Michaela’s least favorite subject. Her teacher, Mrs. Parveen, was at the front of the room, giving trigonometric functions her all; but the whole thing made Michaela sick! Sine, cosine, tangent. More like shitty, cringey, trash. At least she came by...
What you remember is how you had trouble believing it was Ohio, even southern Ohio, the way the river moved and swirled, rushing over rocks, and scuttling the overhanging brush clutching the bank, and the water legibly clear to the bottom in the shallower runs, grassy...
You ask me: What is the collective noun for a handful of spent cigars beneath the knotty, crooked oak in the parking lot outside the Dollar Store where you work, dark nubs nestled like easter eggs in the dewy grass, loops of paper bands snug around the ends, the...
The night your father and uncle guzzle a thirty-pack of Miller Lite and ride your glittery bike shirtless through the neighborhood, you punch through your screen and tumble into the mulch. You have no plan, no destination, just a vague ache that launches you out the...
1st Place: The circus without white horses or elephants by Fiona Lynch 2nd Place: Sheepskin by Hannah Zhang 3rd Place: Too Distracted to Function by Lannie Stabile Shortlist Natalie Abbott dm Armstrong Christine Aucoin Shannon Blake Roberta Clipper Alexis Collins Kyle...
We took BART and then a bus down University Avenue, me in my jeans and black pleather jacket, as soft as the surface of my tongue, which means not soft at all, and you in your leather skirt, zipper down the side seam. Every man’s eyes snagged on your torn fishnet...