By Belle Waring / Fiction /         “Learn to obey, you who are but dust! Learn to humble yourself, you who are but earth and clay!” —Thomas à Kempis It wasn’t like we kept people prisoner. You could just walk off down the driveway if you wanted, two lines of dark grayish brown curving into dusk, with the huge oaks over it, and the hummock between. We would pla y that was f airy hills with the green moss, and the little things like fir trees, and slender, tiny orange mushroo

By Mansi Dahal / Nonfiction /         “What versions of yourself lived in that home that never lived anywhere else?” The writing prompt hangs in the air as I doodle in my off white notebook, feeling exposed in a classroom of fifty. My mind tells me I can't write here, fearing that my grip on the pen betrays my unresolved heartaches and my clumsiness—the mango juice on my flowery dress, nail polish on my beige romper, tteok-bokki on my parallel pants. Each time I tell myself,

By Weiji Wang 王唯冀 / Poetry /         Sophie had a daughter, who died an infant. She lived—how could she not—and gave another birth. A son. The son grew out of infancy. He lived. Sophia thought her daughter should live: how could she not / think how could she not / live how could the son / go on to live and live / the way men would live how could he not / live the way she / herself lived / the way her daughter / was supposed to live if he was going to She put him in a dress an

By Abby Melick / Flash /         The man writes her a love letter.   The man (married) writes her (his coworker) a love letter.   The man (who is married and has been for eight years) writes her (his best friend at work, the one who kept him sane during the merger last fall) a love letter (slipped into her company mailbox during work hours).   The man (married) asks her in the love letter if there’s any chance her feelings for him are as strong as his feelings for her. The ma

By Amber Wong / Nonfiction /         The April air’s crisp as a Granny Smith, the water smooth as velvet. Shades of coral edge over the eastern horizon, the promise of a sunny spring day. At the top of the University of Washington crew racecourse on the edge of Lake Washington, my eyes sweep the skyline, north to south, hoping for a sweet reward. And there it is. Today, beyond the dark evergreen nests of firs, the blue-gray jags of the distant Cascade Mountains end with an e

By Rosabelle Glover / Flash /         Mr. Ryerson, the private detective, doesn’t tell me what I want to know. The information he imparts is polite, like a proper Englishman, he skirts around the details considered best for private moments. But the folder is open, the details handwritten in fine blue ink that darkens as Mr. Ryerson lowers the blinds behind his desk to block the afternoon sun. The office feels smaller with the blinds lowered. Egg-shell-white walls press agains

at the Nursing Home, Lock Ward By Eric Machan Howd / Poetry /         she begged me not to leave her moments after we first met as if I’d abandon her like all the others still in her life that won’t do  she cried though I told her my backyard is full of wild forget-me-nots and I’ve never had the heart to mow them over for sod their small blue stars hold every story I tell them

By Zainab Omaki / Nonfiction /         Technically, I did meet you. I have a picture of you holding me as a baby at some sort of party. You are in a bright orange skirt suit, bathed in the glitter of lights under a sky of darkness. Your hair is a gloriously coiffed jheri curl, your long legs tucked under you on a pool chair, the water in mid-ripple beside you. And your lips, your ostentatiously purple lips, your stunningly purple lips, are spread out in a smile that knows no

By Carole Greenfield / Poetry /         You're right , you said.  We ought to milk it for all it's worth. There are so many things about me you have yet to unearth but you are in that place where you aver nothing I can do  or say will put you off, so I'll take you at your word,  take you as you are, make a wish on every evening star,  try not worry about how long it will last, when the milk  will expire, when the glow will pass as I watch the winter moon  beyond my study glas

By Tan Jia Yan / Poetry /         Last Friday I found maggots in my dinner. Slimy, dense things reminding me of my own mortality. The cashier at the grocer was an old man with the kind of almond eyes that make you feel translucent. Brainless too. Like a maggot. Stupid, isn't it, to think $3 would always get you something good. To think myself infallible. I thought about vomit. Sweaty strands of hair pulled back. Cold air hitting my neck like a warning. The maggots were everyw

By Ann Calandro / Nonfiction /         In July and August we stayed with my mother’s parents in their white summer house with green shutters, fifty miles west of the city. The house had four small bedrooms, one bathroom, five acres of weedy grass, and a large kitchen in which my grandmother Evelyn baked bread and pies, made jam, and canned fruit. Outside smelled like lilacs, planted by a previous owner. Inside smelled like burning sugar. The summer I was nine, my father wen

By T.J. Jourian / Nonfiction /         I’m not sure what to make of this group yet.  It’s my first time meeting these dozen or so he/hims and they/thems, some with names I recognize from seeing them in my inbox every so often on a listserv for the Masculinity Action Project. We are sitting in a circle in a… well, looking around, I actually can’t tell what this room is normally used for. There are seven or eight overflowing bookshelves across three walls, a small kitchen in

By Catherine Niolet / Fiction /         Daffodils bloomed early in our backyard that year. My son and I noticed them in our morning wanderings: he, gripping a borrowed basketball squarely between two banana-slick palms, elbows wet with oatmeal and whole milk, and I, wearing a too-large coat and beginning to sweat.  At first it was only the shoots that were visible, and we watched them each day as the stalks emerged and later unfolded. We plucked them when they were beginning

By Wally Swist / Poetry /         I enter the ward and see you at the end of the long hallway sitting among others in their wheelchairs. When I reach you, I place my forehead against yours, and hear you whisper, “There are reflections everywhere.” After I move you to a quieter corner, I read Rilke to you and you respond to the poem about stars. I comb your long hair back so I can put on one of the colored headbands I brought. Today is dark grey, to harmonize with your blue pl

By Kory Wells / Flash /         At 12– One of my mother’s best friends—she has two, both named Nancy, and in this memory they blend together—picks me up after school. From the teacher’s parking lot. Usually I catch the bus. “Your mother’s doing okay,” she says. “It was benign.” Which means not malignant, I think. These words are only weeks old to me, and I have trouble remembering which is good and which is bad. It will be decades before I know they aren’t pure opposites. My

By Mark Wagstaff / Fiction /      The haul from the ladder tried her delts and nerves. That second, hung from the hatch, her toes ballet pointes, free of the ladder. That second she saw herself slip, fall, a broken bone and, worse, her precious face. Not today. Today she grappled onto the roof, a fuss of strength over grace. Gravel breeze between parted lips. The caress of height on her skin. First time she climbed on the roof, she assumed everyone was at work, heads down,