The Elephant Girl [essay] by Deborah Lott

From the first day of kindergarten on, LeeAnn and I watched each other. As I sat in my chair by the window, howling and sobbing for my mother, LeeAnn could not take her eyes off me. The other children, “big boys and girls” who didn’t need their mothers, stared at me with contempt for so …

Refugee Lesson [essay] by Terese Svoboda

I faced nine surly teenagers: two Sudanese Nuer and a Nubian, two Laotians, two Cubans, and a Bosnian. I didn’t forget the Mexican boy at the table’s end, but Hispanics are so much a part of Nebraska’s farming life, he didn’t register as a refugee. The principal had rounded up a selection of immigrants who …

Why I Never Married [poem] by David Simpson

Of course, I meant to, having been raised to believe marriage was God’s plan for us, and I wanted to for all the guilt-free sex a man desires and I had to, if I wanted to be a real man and a good Christian but then I took Physics and found out that fission was …

Gently (With Tablespoons) [story] by Mark Wisniewski

He walked into the hardware store realizing that he hadn’t been in a hardware store in years, maybe since childhood, and that the smell of bird seed and fertilizer reminded him of his older brother Zach. A year earlier he’d rarely thought about Zach, but now that he knew Zach’s story he often imagined the …

A Toast to the Cook [poem] by Bernard Cooper

A long fragrant leash of steam tethers me to your figure stirring a pot at the stove. Herbs steep, earthy and engrossing as the dirt I dig in my dreams. A tracery of ancient spills rises from the carpet fiber: bland, innumerable crumbs of bread; a whiff of stale table wine, once so wet and …

The Empty Nest [story] by Zelda Lockhart

I am a woman who considers herself careful with relationships, but had not considered until recently in my life that careful was an excuse for reclusive. On weekends, I walked the distance downhill to the rickety weather worn shed, resisting the sharp cold. My wheelbarrow crunched over snow, and I hummed, because I knew that …

Life Guard [poem] by David Simpson

My father coaxed me to lie face down on the lake’s cold surface across his forearms, reassuring me that I could take a deep breath, put my nose into the water, and he wouldn’t let me drown. Despite my protests, he shifted my buoyed weight to just his palms, then to one palm, then to …

Mystery Woman [story] by Walter Cummins

Even through the thick doors Jerry Pohl could hear pounding music and whoops from inside the student center pub. His instinct was to turn and head back to the dorm, but Cheryl had said she would be there, a casual remark that he knew was an invitation. They had started talking in the hallway before …

A Way with Cows [essay] by Duff Brenna

For three days snow has gathered in a wide band across northern Wisconsin, piling four feet high in some places. My farm is ten miles south of Lake Superior. This area often gets what is called “lake effect snows.” Which means two to three feet more than what Hayward, Spooner or Rice Lake get. The …

Red Sky [poem] by J.C. Todd

The day opens its case. Spinnakers blaze and a dawn like this washes up on the shoal of remembered where he left me behind, that boy who left himself in jungle muck and shrapnel, bile at the root of tongue and phantoms burning below his hips. Like a dog star, the bay drags into its …

On Beverly’s Hill [essay] by Therése Halscheid

January 12th: Today I traveled four hours to housesit for a little-known place called “Beverly’s Hill.” This unusual clapboard home is perched on a ridge, with the frozen Delaware River below. To one side is a waterfall that is not frozen. It flows down over tiered rocks, alongside Beverly’s place. The sound of it is …

Freezer Case [story] by Anne Colwell

Hungry Man Salisbury Steak had been his favorite frozen dinner since he was a kid and his mother let the family eat frozen dinners on Friday nights on the folding snack tables while they watched TV. She called it “an indoor picnic” and they would sit together and watch the Brady Bunch and then the …

First Birth (After Sharon Olds) [poem] by Kelley White

They taught us little, and what they taught us I had not learned, so I just took it as it came: slippery, the naked body blue-grey, greased, slipping as I turned it in my hands, blood rushing dark and clotting at my feet, the twisted rope unearthly white and pulsing under that too-bright glare, little …

Grace [essay] by Dustin Beall Smith

If your parachute doesn’t open, you hit the ground at 125 miles-per-hour. This means going from a vertical speed of 174 feet-per-second to a dead stop, instantly. The resulting energy (mass times acceleration) splinters bone and liquefies cartilage, and usually shoots your innards, if not through a ruptured abdominal wall, then directly out your anus. …

To Know It Again [poem] by Sara Michas-Martin

The mind has some idea of what to do because it’s always been invested in the enterprise of seeing, keeping track of how something feels and how it operates and if it’s been here before, certain about the death of many cells or the time in line at the bank you hugged the wrong mother. …

Eduard, Sasha, and I Go to the Black Sea [essay] by Sharon Stephenson

During the coffee break I tell Eduard that one of the bigwigs from his lab creeps me out. To him this is no surprise. He asks if I have gone swimming in the Black Sea. No. Not yet. I plan to go this afternoon, when most of the conference participants are on an excursion to …

In Trutina Mentis [poem] by David Simpson

When have I heckled the world with weapons, whether with the shofar or powderhorn of words made of all that long-time-tamped-down misfit feeling of a man lost at his own party? I have, like Peter, preferred to chauffer moi-même near the flame of some stupid wish such as, some day, lying in the Queen of …

Where They Were Sent (1949) [poem] by J.C. Todd

Ice patching ditches and feed troughs shimmers, but there’s no shiny patch on the hut’s rusted roof. Fields that snow crusted a day ago are seized by frost, by frozen shit and barnyard clutter, the gardens iced-over, their crop cabbage stumps. These are the man-plowed fields of one-cow farms, holdings that yield enough to keep …

It’s Not as Bad as It Was [story] by Dave Newman

Her boyfriend called from a crack house in the Hill District and said, “Did you get my note about your grandfather dying?” He said, “I think I put it on the fridge. I don’t know. Did we talk about this? I’m not as high as I sound.” Louise said, “Shane, slow down.” Shane said, “I …

The Word Dog [essay] by Steve Schutzman

I wanted to forget the word dog. I started by saying dog outloud again and again, as if it might tear through like a cloth, weak from being remembered too often. I said the word dog until it became meaningless, pure nonsense, a mere sound, but this wasn’t forgetting. It was more like kissing without …