Riverboat Promenade, Caroline Malouse   Pa says the ducks are still here because I’ve been feeding them all our bread. But the truth is they took refuge under our dock during the storm that dripped rain down our walls. He’s tried throwing sticks and rocks, and at one point he even sent me after them…

Ocean, Beatrice Ugolini     Even the air is ice- ridden. Locals rehash   the sweep of tides flushing out debris, clams   freezing in their pitch- gray sandbeds. This wintertime   summer home sits dark on its plot.   Tree frogs chirp until nine, then disappear,   sleeping in the scrub pine. Defiant in…

Matchstick, Charles Green     From a young age I was naïve enough to know I was a genius. All the bored wealthy mothers Of my friends begged me to ski.   The girls kissed me on the playground, they kissed me in the classroom. As good pilgrims do I ran away and laughed.  …

Man Sleeping on Couch, Occupy Philadelphia, City Hall, PA, Joshua Hopkins [Trigger Warning: Drug Mention] Beau, who lives on my couch, attempts to step out of my car and into waves of heat dancing in the dirt parking lot in front of our duplex. Closer in size to a bear than a man, he has to…

My X is an Ape, Lauren West     Two women walk into a bar; they are Lilith and Lot’s wife and they are lonesome tonight. You are Lot’s wife and you are still looking back. I have no home, you say to the naked woman beside you. You can’t help but let your eyes linger…

Boats For Rent, Christina Harrington     When I discovered the tent in the back corner of my grandparent’s A-frame, I never expected my dad would let me sleep in it for the boys’ weekend, but when I asked, he said, “Sure, champ,” and we took it to the backyard and put it up together.…

That’s How It Is on This Bitch of an Earth, Isabel Sicant [Trigger Warning: Child Death Mention; Depictions of Drug Addiction/Overdose] When I was a child, my dad always walked with a cane. He had a few of them, but the one I can picture most distinctly had a bronze dog head on top. The…

Morning Prayer, Jenny Brum     I thought I would have something on her, this nun. I thought that being out in the world, spending my time not with my eyes closed, wearing pants, watching television, would give me something that she didn’t have. But now she’s coming slowly down the hall and I’m smiling already, far…

Pause, Vanessa Burrows [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Fatphobia] She took too much chili cheese dip. And my Girl Scout friend Katie Johnson, with a too thick, bland brown bob, told me to tell her that she was taking too much. I felt hot and stared at the Mill Street Mustangs wood paneled stage. Looked sideways…

Limbs, Kathleen Saunders     We are through the door—the side door, the door to the mudroom where the family’s shoes rest in crowded rows—and Claudia doesn’t bother to greet us as we pass the kitchen table, where she sits in a sea of ungraded papers. She knows that by the time she lifts her…

Winter Morning, Lyall Harris   The screaming makes her break a dish a white ceramic plate with black scuffmarks from a decade of rib eyes, chicken breasts marinated in Italian dressing asparagus in yogurt sauce and reheated meatloaf. She leaves the pieces in the beige sudsy water throwing open the glass sliding door and scanning…

Possibilities, Sarah Brotzman     Let the sand settle in your lungs like unwanted guests in your living room, drinking all your red wine and eating all your cheese, saying the room has become a bit tight. Pull over. Have yourself a double heart attack. No lettuce, no tomato, add bacon, extra American.   Isn’t…

Clock Dreams, Muge Karamanci [Trigger Warning: Depictions of  Self Harm/Death; Homophobic slur; Drug Addiction] A friend of mine, a long time ago, was buried alive in a snowdrift in the Old First Ward. The way he told it to me was that he was at the bar after a long day at the plant and had…

Mom Said Cows Lying Down Means Rain, Emma Webster [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Animal Death] We’re late getting back to the orchard, sure, but this doe with the broken neck is just too damn good to pass up. The way it’s smelling up the road, open and cooking, has got Denny fixed and immobile. He’s keeping…

Play the Cards, Diana Chou     When I say she was something else, I mean that she reminded me of a circus.   Her colors were not very bright, nor was she shaped like three rings.   But inside an old tent in the corner of a moonlit field,   you could watch her dance…

Untitled, Katharina Windemuth [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Illness/Medical Trauma] After the brain thing1 the world became divided; there were those who knew the truth about my illness, and those who knew the easy-to-swallow version I personally lubricated for them. As much as I tried to prevent it, there was the cleavage of my life’s short timeline…

Laughter in the Streets of Istanbul, Anna Blue [Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse Mention] I. The first verse I memorize I repeat over and over in my head for days My tongue tripping over the letters and sounds until they become mine. She teaches me new ones—(I’ve forgotten them now)— tells me stories from memory of…

Celery, Molly Kampmann [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Body Gore; Fatphobia] Last night I had a dream that I was fat. More than fat: crouched on the bathroom floor of my old high school, flesh hanging heavy and pendulous. Gravity ached. Deeper and twist. I tried to cut it all out before you saw me, drew sharp…

Untitled, Cameron Taylor     The lesson ends when Mrs. Xia writes in the little notebook. She has given one to each of her students. Martin’s is light blue. The pages are crinkled from the impressions of her writing, the black and blue ink, as if someone spilled water on them and let them dry.…

Nostalgia, Teymur Guseynov     Along the creek, July clung to our limbs with clover-twined snapdragons. Our plan was to dig a mudslide, strip to skin, and “wrassle” with our bodies in backwater— back then everything was a day like this: sun, water, skin, Eugene and me, and a bed of stones for guppies.  …

Hand, Justin Miller     Soap woman lives here, shares a room with wax dolls, giants, dwarves. Caked in woman flesh, she dreams (open mouthed) of trying on the face in jelly hanging next to President Cleveland’s tumor but her fixed jaws say nothing. A twin fetus contorts its lips, cries at its other half, my…

Hollywood, Jonathan Grado       Everything other than the present is terrifying. We talked about it yesterday on the roof instead of class, watching unimagined land spread into designated lots,   the gutted exteriors of sheds, overgrown lawns of dying women. You wondered, when they look in mirrors at their faces, fanned with wrinkles,…