Cassie BurkhardtTHREE FLASH ON MOTHERHOOD MUD KITCHEN Dirt is the bane of my existence, but my kids love it—can’t resist it, never met a mud puddle they didn’t immediately want to wade in barefoot. All I see is laundry. We…
Hart Vetter SLAPPED “Just let it rise,” said Aaron. He’d had it. My son and I had schlepped over two dozen filled buckets out the basement up the steps to the front door and dumped them down the driveway, mercifully…
Erika KrouseI FEEL LIKE I COULD STAND HERE WITH YOU ALL NIGHT AND IT WOULD BE THE WORST NIGHT OF MY LIFE I work at Ye Olde Curio Shoppe downtown. We consign from the community—people bring in old family items…
Amanda GainesTRICH You ask him to wrest his fingers into the base of your hair from behind you. To pull. To undo you, the cartilage of your throat cutting against your taut skin, neck arced like a bridge over stygian…
Lori Miller KaseGUARDING THE NEST The robin eyes us from her nest. All it takes is a ruffling of the papers beside me to send her flying into the nearby redbud trees, angry wings flapping. I sit on the back…
Coralie LoonTHE WINK Lia woke to the sound of a rooster cawing. Again. The first time, she convinced herself she had imagined it. The sound didn’t belong here, not in the city, not in the suburbs, not even in the…
Sarah CarsonMY DAUGHTER’S SCHOOL IS CLOSED AFTER ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA So I drive us to the zoo in the closest faraway place, and as she skips down the path to the primate house, the entire savannah is her…
Freesia McKeeTender Experiments We Could Conduct Together or Alone after Tyler Friend 1. We could go to Kwik Trip at 9:00 pm and pretend to shop while flirting over chicken tenders and red Gatorade. 2. We could go to Hilltop…
Charles Scott ULYSSES Ned Duncan arrived at the Cincinnati airport and took a taxi to the church in Madisonville where Darrell’s funeral was being held. In New York, in the years before Darrell got sick, they had lived together in…
Jane FeinsodTWO POEMS Apology And what of the child killed in a bathroom. And what of the others. Sorting the bookshelf and bleaching the tub. I worry I’m tumored. I mean that. In socks watching dog walkers. And what of…
Nicole BrogdonTHE POD I never felt enough eyes on me, never enough love. Never enough arms, wrapping round my body. Nor hands, chopping vegetables for soup. Not enough healthy backs, moving my furniture. More hands, putting on clean sheets—floral sheets,…
Kim MagowanTHE BACK NINE The email is from Marianne’s boarding school classmate Harrison McBee, then captain of the lacrosse team, now an investment banker living with his husband in Manhattan; the subject heading is “Sad News.” Reluctantly, Marianne opens it.…
T.S. BenderMIGUEL’S SANCHO It was some point early in August, a Thursday or Friday, some point at the end of the week that Miguel didn’t show up to work. And that morning, as the sun streamed into the garage of…
Katie TonellatoBABY, SWEETHEART, HONEY Honorable Mention of the 2024 Cleaver Emerging Artist Award When I was young, they called me baby, sweetpea, honey, cherry pie, chubs. So often they called me these things, that when they called me my name,…
Julian ShendelmanSUSPENSION POINTS “I suppose you could DM,” Marine said, staring into her clipboard. “Direct message?” “Dungeon monitor. You essentially walk around making sure people aren’t openly bleeding on the carpet. It’s a violation of our lease. Here.” She handed…
Claudia MonpereSALT PAINT Tina and her sister, Meredith, are painting cats on the six-foot cardboard coffin. Tuxedo cats, tortoiseshells, tabbies, Maine Coons. Meredith is the real artist. Tina should have left her to it, sick of her sister offering advice…
Sofia Drummond-MooreEXHUME The bog body lies on the light table like an oil spill made flesh. Curled on his side, knees drawn up, Avril can see the outlines of his once-bones under skin like leather. She can also see the…
Michael GrinthalTHEY ARE CALLING YOU AND THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE SAYING Honorable Mention of the 2024 Cleaver Emerging Artist Award In the unsolvable sun Of a yellowing year All of the newest tunes Of tiredness are rolling About in…
Jess YuanAQUACULTURE QUARTET [1] to explain eyestalk ablation imagine floating mid face fallopian tube connecting to the ocular nerve ………….in your shrimp body ………….eroded by a losing economy overextending, deteriorating because blindness makes more babies in her ………….she grows fertile…
Susan GosleeLIGERTOWN: HERALDIC ATTITUDE Ligertown —Idaho, 1995 Heraldic attitude —Photograph of lion 9 Goldenrod lines the creek like torches lighting the road to a garrison. Narrow banks shortbread-mold the lion’s spine and chest, but his red-gold mane floats out as…
Sophie NunbergA CONSTELLATION OF ERRORS Honorable Mention of the 2024 Cleaver Emerging Artist Award I study the events of my birth like astrologers do stars in the sky. I’m already late when, two days before I finally do break my…
Rebecca EntelHOW TO DRINK ENOUGH WATER IN WARTIME You have finally logged out from your social media because it was making you physically ill. With less scrolling, you’re not getting more done. You feel bad news from journalists or emails…
Ariana KellyAT ELEVATION In mid-June after my sophomore year at Yale, I took a Greyhound bus from New Haven, Connecticut to Boise, Idaho for $59.00. The ride took three-and-a-half days, during which two people were kicked off in Ohio for…
Peter GrandboisSOMETIMES WE SPEAK TO OURSELVES in dead things other times we fit too many bodies into the meadow where the elk whistle and stamp it’s strange this book of burning leaves where snow sometimes settles inside like prayer other…
Darcy LohmillerA SUDDEN GUST OF WIND We step out of the truck into a bright October sun and a howling wind. In the field we have chosen to hunt, thick stalks of grass flatten and shudder against the gusts. Our…
Sofi GuvenPROXIMITY When I get home, I start to make bread. I open my window curtains wide and prepare the ingredients. Buckwheat flour, salt, sugar, and yeast stored in jars, scooped out with a ring of measuring cups. The windowsill…
Luke KoestersHOSPICE INTAKE I close my eyes and jump / off a stone pointed cliff. / I’m back to falling / into the gulch below La Quebrada. / I was high diving / only four months ago. / I open…
Hannah SmartTHE DETRIMENT OF DOUBT “Hello, I’d like to report a fire at the Gerry’s Pizza off West Ninth Street.” “Okay, and your name, sir?” “Gerry Parker.” “Could you describe the situation?” “I am seated in the restaurant parking lot…
Todd RobinsonEverywhere the World is Green and Dying 1 And shelterbelts of feeling, barn swallows flashing …
J. Bradley MinnickA MAN’S REACH SHOULD EXCEED HIS GRASP My mother arranged for us to walk to school together. I didn’t want to go to school; and, I especially didn’t want to walk anywhere with Kate Wheeler. Kate Wheeler was…
Richie ZaborowskeSTAY ON THE LINE A tornado of nurses blew in. The whole maternity care team. Cracking commands. Swirling around. Wheeling your wife away. And when you stood to follow, they told you, no. To wait, and not worry. So…
Michelle BittingManger, Emptied I saw the shepherds slogging through red dust,Their sandals kicked up a ruddy cataclysmWith palm trees sighing through green stars above. This was in Los Angeles where the active sitefeatured a bereft crèche, no babe front and…
Joshua AmbreFREEDOM TRAIL In front of the visitor center, our tour guide adjusts his breeches. They’re slightly too tight to be family-friendly, but I’m relieved to have something to look at besides old buildings for the next hour. I watch…
Marie ManillaRETROSPECTIVE Lena skids around the backseat as the cabbie rudely shifts lanes. Her gnarled knuckles couldn’t negotiate the seatbelt. The tunnel engulfs her, the hum and grrr. The weight of all that earth compressing her brain. But they emerge…
Gideon Huan-LangTRANSNESS AS PERPETUAL PAPERBOY Imagine: Victorian hand-me-downs, black suspenders, tweed-lined cap. And he is holleringabout the end of the world. Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Call him doomsday cult, the way he had broken his voice already—the Titanic,…