Bradley steered his Chevy S-10 through the dark to the back of the Campbell property to drop off the deer. He saw Dewayne back there discussing something into a cordless phone, pacing across the open-aired shed where deer and other game were processed. In a past life...
One I know it’s cliché to start with the face in the mirror, but Cassiopeia, how can we begin any other way? Your high cheekbones, arched eyebrows shading ochre eyes, stately nose, and strong chin. Your hair, sometimes blonde, sometimes chestnut, coiled atop your head...
An excerpt from the forthcoming novel The Opening of the Mouth Jade hadn’t mentioned this train ride to her mother. When they’d spoken recently, she’d filled any space that had opened for it in their conversation with some remark about rising crime, gossip from the...
Katherine Yang A World Encoded I had never thought so obsessively about poetry as I did when I was learning about syntactic linguistics. There were different kinds of verbs, my professor had told me. If John threw a ball, that throwing was a doing. But if John loved...
Read an interview with the author here. Jeneé Skinner Mother Goose An old woman gave birth to four eggs. Gold and cradled by tree roots and ribbons inside her house. Their births were ugly, complicated by forceps and fluorescent lighting, but the loving made it worth...
She Was Never the Birds Heavy bodies fall into me as the train brakes and then jerks forward. At each stop, it lets out a prolonged shriek like that of a fussy child. There is a map nailed to the wall that resembles the inside of the human body: green, red, and blue...
You Can Say Sorry They don’t come home for all sorts of reasons. Some explanations feel legitimate, others courteous; some are downright lies, but what are you to do? My daughter Jeanie was meant to come home last Friday, but she didn’t. She called saying she got...
The Boy in the High-Top Converses There are a pair of high-top Converses at Four-Points intersection dangling off the telephone wires. The sneakers were white once but aren’t anymore, just a washed-out gray, heavier from soaking up however many rains that came through...
Swimming Lessons The only way I could make it through a flight was to sleep the whole way, so I slipped a Dramamine tablet past my lips and dry-swallowed before settling into my seat. My father sat in the middle space, providing a buffer between me and the stranger...