Issue Fifty-Three
No Looking Back
Each time they move, they leave something behind. One time it was a broken lamp, one time it was the cat, one time it was her wedding ring. As Carla lines up the kids outside the new rental at the end of their three-state, 18-hour drive, she realizes that this time...
Watermelon Farming, A varietal tale
Crimson (Not So) Sweet When I was little my parents had a watermelon farm. Our cocker spaniel and I would run up and down the rows together. We’d also play in the water spouting from the irrigation lines. One day, Mom turned on the lines and out one end flowed a...
Your Life in Cars
When you were five and the best best thing is a plastic go-kart vroom -vroom that your father bought you because it was his turn to have you for Christmas that year, and Tommy from down the block tells you to get out this car is for boys and you don't know yet that...
Unsweetening the Plot with a Rabbit
How did this uninvited rabbit, appearing suddenly from under my shed, get so fat? Is she pregnant, or an overfed domestic, or has this long-eared chubby creature feasted daily from the spilled birdseed shaken down to the ground from the harsh, destructive east winds,...
The Aquarium
(Octopus arms have a mind of their own.) At The Family, every girl taken on as an unsuspecting intern has followed the same employment path: until now. First, Jock (snidely referred to as Jock-topus by his staff on account of his many hidden wandering arms) headhunted...
Tele
we float as long as we have a swim cap the child’s head is wet a neat temperament sparkles beneath the fluorescent light there is a Judas Gate in the swimming pool and those who are sinking are pushed into a single hole the closeness of things that are far away let’s...
Subsong
Your father always said you wanted the world, but as a child, all you wanted was to be a finch. A finch, then a singer, then just… something. Roughly a month after emerging from the egg, a young zebra finch begins warbling. These early vocalizations, called “subsong,”...
Sequestered Trains, Salads and Cheeseburgers with Ranch
Sequestered Trains, Salads and Cheeseburgers with Ranch in a Box Wooden crate, plastic doll, glossy print paper, mirror, shredded green tissue paper, glass bulb, and papier-mache. Sequestered Trains, Salads and Cheeseburgers with Ranch exemplifies the artist’s desire...
Running With Scissors
Mom let us kids do whatever we wanted, as long as we entertained her. Fail in that and she would discard you like a dirty dishrag. She was most amused when our escapades involved physical injury. How much would we sacrifice for a moment buried against her bosom, a...
On Our Way To See My Father
This gloss-black tinted-window pickup truck beside you at the light is so lifted you'd need a ladder to get into it, its extra-large tailpipe pouting like an all-caps argument on the internet, a prissy Instagram star masquerading as a workhorse American's-American...
Nowhere Special
I never realized until I grew older why my mother wore sneakers with holes. Sneakers with holes were not allowed in my school. My school’s first day felt so important to me that my mother and I drove to Walmart a few weeks earlier to buy new sneakers for me on a super...
Number Sense
The number 4 was a show-off. More limber than the others, she could move her lines in any direction like an acrobat. And she had that artful little triangle in the middle.
If you thought I was ruthless then—
With kindness I could say you didn’t know what you were doing. Not with me, at least. And maybe you didn’t know what you were doing with Jenny, with Eloise, with Rebecca. With your Natashas and your Sashas. Maybe not even with your wife. You knew how to be a writer...
I lied when I told you I was a Riot Grrrl
I lied when I told you I was a Riot Grrrl I wasn’t. I sat on the lawn with the boys, in our jeans, our band t shirts, our heads shaved. I watched the girls on the steps. Watched them sit on each other’s laps and run their knuckles down the backs of necks. I watched...
Friend
She tells me again. I’m your friend. The shadows they talk, but not with their mouths. I’m really just fine. Jobs here are hard to get, but I’m okay. I walk the streets and talk to them. Broken curbs and sidewalk grass. A hole in an athletic sock. It feels like a long...
Echo Canyon
She shoots a rope of sun lotion on his back and he misses her pause, her pause when the years reverse. Echoes in her hand find the shape, the shape his father left behind. The same broad map, broad map her nails once traced, her tongue defined. Ghost canyon now, how...
Diet Crisis
A week after you went I emailed the newspaper who broke Your story wrote the headline: Did they Fall or did they jump? When I wrote the emailI was at a bar in Boston and I Had just flown in For a concert festival and I was pretty drunk Or I had the intentions to get...
Dangerous Pussy at the Manosphere Casino: An Abecedarian
At midnight, we rise out of the bubbling cauldron of a hot tub, our bobbed red hair slick to our ears, our black-and-white gingham dresses clinging to our wet curves. Because we resemble trad wives, we offer fresh-baked cookies on heart-shaped plates. Because this is...
Cleansing
Lining up in the queue to check in, you study the Aboriginal artwork on the wall, dots, lines and skeletons, but mostly arrows, pointing in that direction, and you look back and wonder whether it's a sign you should follow, but that way—only the front doors and the...
Cherry Soda
My 9:00am is being held on suspicion of negligent discharge of a firearm, criminal damage and manslaughter. His gun went off by accident when he was moving it from his shed to the basement, ironically for safety. The bullet went through the garden fence and killed his...
Can you call him
The first text comes in at 5:30, I am still pumping the kayak. Can you call Cormac. He didn't go to practice. Came home on the bus instead. Angry. Won't talk to me. Call him. At the house I would take phone to the other room, and leave it face down next to car keys...