Excerpts

Erin Wilson BECOMING THE SILENCE OF FOXES     Crouched in the autumn wood, I remove the map of my skull.   I grow down, out and upward.   Rain becomes lost inside the raining of leaves.   I try…

Mark Lilley THE LANGUAGE OF FORGIVENESS     The road to my friend’s house runs along the east side of the Licking River. On summer days you might find boys fishing on the lower banks or roughhousing knee-deep and shirtless…

Claire Scott INSOMNIA Gummies, Ambien, Melatonin, Lunesta no alcohol whatsoever (Nyquil is cheating) eating sea slug entrails, lathering my hair in a mixture of mustard and mayonnaise rubbing the ear wax of a dog on my left foot reading Moby-Dick…

Michael Rogner MOTHER WATCH ME CANNONBALL Sand in the barrens. Squeaking ovals of Appalachian quartz. The memory reassembly is complete though four screws and a nut lay ignored on the floor. Hurricanes of laughter scattering oak debris. Armadillos tucked into…

Micah Daniel McCrotty SKIPJACK After twenty-five acres of corporate lawns, he paused from mowing under a short ginko tree to take a pull from a gallon jug and shade his neck against summer sun. He watched a man emerge from…

Miles Waggener SOUP               “…and those messages (God would not damn them) do not even know they are champions”                                                 --Jack Spicer   At baggage claim in Mexico City in 1991 a grade schooler approached me with her parents…

John Schneider   SO AS NOT TO DO MORE HARM   Evenings, he downs one then the other brandy Manhattan, swallowing the cherry   from her emptied cocktail glass. The spectral ice cubes remind him how cold summer has become.…

Kevin McLellan IRON The 4:00. Provincetown-to-Boston carries less than 20 of us. No one else here, stern & starboard: the 2nd floor. I think, Dignity directly corresponds to a face—my face & persona just dismissed by a fellow fellow—& I…

Jonathan Bennett COLORS MADE MANIFEST For the friend I couldn’t see   THERE was a fog that morning. Wisps of wild whispers—rolling, light, barely visible—lapped against our neon-pink house. It had become apparent at dinner the night before.  Something seemed…

THE PARADE By Mary Birnbaum   THIS was a long time ago, almost twenty years, and it seems like just a little thing, but I’m going to tell you now because maybe it accounts for a lot. Or more than…