By Jessie Knoles   lesson plans in fifth grade we dissected a chicken leg our science teacher bought at a nearby grocery store no one died that year but the…

By claire hopple I followed someone. This person, Claudia, I knew her a long time ago. I had never followed anyone before, but now it’s hard for me to imagine…

By Cathy Ulrich There was one day at school that one of the girls started on fire. She was eating lunch with her friends, except not eating exactly, but picking…

By meghan mcclure Take your bones to bed again, and then again. Rub yourself down with ash and wine worked into a paste. Bang your bones against bones that don’t…

By julie paul At the crossroads of the crotch begins the vulval buzz: ten thousand bees, lips on a trumpet. Together we ride the road that tempts the sea to…

by kiley reid I told my mother I was going on a mission trip but I went to the moon instead. It was as simple as not getting off the…

(after Warsan Shire) by theo legro The year death began to follow me in and out of every door. The year of side-streets after midnight. The year of hospital rooms.…

By Erin Calabria I knew he was going to leave even before that winter, the air stitched with sleet while the two of us led the horses back and forth…

By bud smith   The night they took his father off life support, we scaled the fence and went to the top of the Paralyzer. Not trying to die. But…

by anna lea jancewicz Lydia hadn’t realized Paul’s superiority to Kurt all at once.  It hadn’t been swift like food poisoning. It had crept up on her, a slow chronic…

By Brian Ellis Shout-out to when you were 22 and living on a saggy, semi-inflated mattress on the floor of the duplex apartment your parents left you in after they’d…

by julianne neely fish to eat    sheep    a secret    perhaps greatest one yet immortality    surely worth    more than    mansion on a lake two mansions on a lake    clothing line    a…