By DM Anderson I was twelve years old the first time I uttered the words son of a bitch. Naturally, I had no idea what those words meant. I was merely a child. I only knew the expression came with a sinister adult-sized connotation. That same year was also when I decided to move my…
By Lina Marino Nora can’t escape the holiday: Christmas-themed sitcoms on TV, festive music in the stores, some idiots even decorate their cars with felt antlers, bells jangling on bumpers, the drivers themselves festooned in fuzzy red hats and ridiculous reindeer noses. Her short ride to the mailbox torments her, every house on the cul-de-sac…
By Daniel Webre From the get-go, Jacques seemed an unlikely suitor. I’m sure whoever arranged these trysts was well-versed in reading pedigree papers and such. Surely, they wouldn’t have sent an over-the-hill poodle to do this stud-work. But Jacques looked old. His white fur had started to yellow, though everyone insisted he was peach. I…
By Sarah Spaulding Avento I open my body to you. Half-eaten Jack – o -lantern a smile tilts through the cracks. The fans buzz and you say it’s too early to think of fall. Just this morning a tropical storm. Houseplants weeping. The skin of our house lashed. My car stopped in the middle of…
By D.B. Gardner The Spouse Trevor wants to stay at the hotel and brood over his wounded stock portfolio, so I decide to stroll the wine-colored cobblestone streets of Old Montreal, thankful I’m not wearing the spiked heels from my bachelorette party. Memories of Montreal seep in from five-plus years ago, the entourage of drunken…
By Amy Scheiner It happened like this. I was sitting in my kitchen stirring grainy almond milk into my coffee one early morning, when I had the strongest memory I ever had in my life. I’m not even sure the word memory properly encapsulates what happened. The morning birds hummed outside. Even though we’d recently…
By Eli Coyle It was a late Saturday afternoon, the last whispers of February drifting away, and the Zoo was alive, a cacophony of youthful chaos. Not a literal zoo, but the name we bestowed upon our apartment complex, an ecosystem thriving with untamed twenty-somethings running wild, fueled by the heady mix of drugs and…
By Martha Hipley The tail first appeared before her thirteenth birthday and grew in at the base of her spine, right above the cleft of her backside. Her mother told her that this was normal. Her grandmother complained that she was too young—maybe it’s all the hormones in the milk, she said. In any case,…
By Richard Wirick If you wish to supplant someone, to substitute yourself for them, could wishes be little waves, partial causes, small curling waters like the ones Roger fished in through the rivers flowing north to Erie, the inland sea that could create or be created from anything—glaciers, ice-swales, beginnings and endings of ages before…