Jeff McLaughlin
Jeff McLaughlin Safe There was the writing spider poised ominously over the back door. There was the textured, colorless snakeskin coiled beside the front sidewalk, papery to the touch, it [...]
Christie Tate
Christie Tate Where's the Beef?: Hamburgers, Disordered Eating, and the Lone Star State During a lull in a group therapy session one morning, Jessica turned to our therapist and said, [...]
Lana Hechtman Ayers
Lana Hechtman Ayers Prayer Is a Painted Lavender Field I remember van Gogh’s Lavender Field II not with my eyes but a sense closest to proprioception how my body held [...]
Margaret F. Browne
Margaret F. Browne To build a wasp's nest 1. A wasp builds her nest from paper—builds paper from wood in the mouth, wood from the world she gathers upon her [...]
Samuel Burt
Samuel Burt Empire Is Frail and flint-toothed, like rusted ice picks, we stumble from the monotone wreck of the city into yawning silence, into alarm— two pheasants, a stillness, and [...]
Joseph Chaney
Joseph Chaney Wrong-Footed For Blake Burr When my friend’s daughter refused to wear shoes on the right feet (they felt good turned against the arches), my friend let her choose [...]
Ian Hall
Ian Hall Love in the Time of Company Towns Nothing worth nothing ever happens after midnight. Coroners & dairy farmers alike have told me this, & you should believe every [...]
Dennis Hinrichsen
Dennis Hinrichsen Pedal Steel Death Song At 32,000 feet the fields resemble a wreckage of abandoned quilts. Patterns: welts and dying moons. Wallace County, Kansas 38° 54' 29” N 101° [...]
Mistee St. Clair
Mistee St. Clair And What Are We Now Because I don't understand titles. What to call a thing. Like us—what do we call ourselves? If I were to name us [...]
Mikal Wix
Mikal Wix Red Observatory I have listened to car horns clash like rams, offered to feed the orphan dogs of Pompeii, slept under summer skies to escape him, spoken to [...]
Flash Flood Winner—Amanda Gaines
Amanda Gaines To Flame Your sister has killed you six times. Before she resorted to unnecessary violence, she handled you gently. Placed you on her water-ringed windowsill on fourteen separate [...]
“Contrafabula” by Nancy Huggett
My mother didn’t end up in the hospital with an unknown diagnosis that quickly turned to cancer. The doctor didn’t draw black blood. The moon was not full, never full, [...]