Issue Sixteen

No one ever remarked on her teeth and that was just fine with her. But perhaps her teeth were less white than they used to be. Her grandmother had purchased for her birthday a gift certificate to a dental clinic. White, Overnight was written in a thin black...

None of us wanted to get there. My father and mother in the front seat. In the back seat, us kids were thinking of ways to slow it down. My sister, Little Peg, said “ooh, let’s count the gas stations.” But, of course, most of them were gone after the bomb hit. “Let’s...

            Those fucking boys were at it again. Doorbell ringing in the middle of the night, them shining their flashlights into the foyer, daring me to come outside, trying to kill me with their laughter. Their...

Today it’s hotter at Camber Sands than anywhere in Death Valley. I’m eating olives stuffed with anchovies because I’ve drunk all the wine in the plastic wine tumbler. Maureen doesn’t like olives. Too foreign, she says. Reminds me of that Israeli guy, did I tell you...

The house burned down. One person died. Don’t ask me about that person, his name or how old he was. I’m telling you right now, I won’t talk about it. I fucking can’t. I cannot think about it. At first, everyone treated the fire like it was a sad accident, just one of...

silence. you promised. lips pressed thin. don’t tell, you think. but—the heaviness of it. the weight of words distended, when once upon a time you oozed innocence, unblemished and soft, trailed by truth like perfume. light exploded through your pores, your dreams,...

You are asleep when I get to your room. I watch your back rise and fall, your face toward the window, toward the Domino Sugars sign lit in the distance. The thick window slightly tinted so the sun doesn’t seem too bright, so it doesn’t need a shade with a cord. I...

I come back home out of breath and unbearably sad. I look for Skippy. “Skippy, where are you?” I say. “Skippy?” I search the common room, the kitchenette, my bedroom, under the couch, the windowsill, my desk, and for reasons I cannot fully justify, the freezer. Skippy...

Einstein overturned the idea that time is the same everywhere.  Time is relative for a horror movie, for a soccer match. For a storm brewing. You kept windows unfastened, watched a podcast. Our star bent over the tub in the adjoining bathroom; her three-year-old...

But now, he’s hungry.  Husband walks in, his teeth shining bright, a big smile on his face, like he’s just entered heaven, he throws his jacket on the floor, takes off his shoes, yelling, honey, I’m home, like in the movies, but we’re not in a movie, it’s not...

1. Wedding Poetry We sip steaming mugs of coffee. Stevia keeps mine dark, sweet and mellow in the caverns of my cheeks. Between us, Wallace Stevens lies open on the bed. “Want to hear a poem about a wedding? It’s called ‘Life Is Motion.’” “Sure,” I say, hoping it...

Hoo-hah! Father and Uncle Ray flap their naked fat bellies and bare feet and red necks around town sucking down beers and setting popsicle stick fires which they pee out. At the fire station they pretend to drive the trucks and wail sirens that mourn the loss of their...

Before the outlaw couple part ways forever, they empty the refrigerator into the oven. In goes raw chicken. In go carrots. In goes a brick of butter, a pound of beef, and a half gallon of milk. In goes a mystery product wrapped in foil, which lands atop a head of...

Jordan regretted leaving the cult. He missed the scent of familiar bodies, how they huddled together on cold nights. The cabins they built were ill-equipped for Montana winters. Snow swept in beneath window sills, gales slithered through gaps in the shingles. One...

The cable car tracks are singing, sewing alarm into my pulse: Shame! Shame! Shame! I am. Jittering on a couch at Chela’s. Her man is a firefighter. A Chinatown native. Small-time coke dealer. He’s still on duty around the corner, where we spent the last evening. It’s...

Cottonwood pods carry me, like snowflakes onto the fertile ground. Around us, origami butterflies and swans decorate the vines of poison ivy plants and cotton mouths loop around, playing our wedding march sonorously slick with singing and sass, punctuated by a tenor...

Those cats, they love that porch. They love the mosquito hum...

The first woman who lived inside herself reported, via text message, that it was nicer than you would expect. Cramped, yes, but I can hear myself for the first time in forever, she wrote, and then the second woman found that this was true—that from the inside, the...

When you looked at me, there was nothing looking back, but a threadless needle containing only the shape of the room. Wood paneled walls, a clean floor. We would smoke on the couch and spend all night watching a woman sing in slow motion on the TV. The moon slipped...

My son, who just turned thirteen, refers to himself as Sergeant Dagny. I named him something else, of course, although I no longer know what to call him, no longer know who he is.  We have never left Minnesota, this unknown town of ours, but he talks incessantly...