Excerpts

Dan’s Gone, Too, Now by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer   Dan’s gone, too, now. He was fishing in a river and was washed away when he didn’t hear the siren announcing that the gates of a nearby dam had opened. Anything can…

Goodwill by Tom Noyes Teaching a summer course meant two thousand dollars, enough to squeak me through to fall if I played it right. There weren’t enough first year composition classes to go around, though, so a lottery was set…

Redacted by Alexandra Persad   The first thing Sarah noticed about the men was their sameness. Their artificial smiles and moussed hair above the neck, their unbuttoned polo shirts and severely white shoes below it. Even their positioning—leaning back in…

Creature By David Ryan   I’d taken up smoking again. I knew I was better than this, but there it was, the red and white pack on the table, the pale blue lighter, a yellow tarred smell on my fingers…

All Jules Wants is a Peloton by Rachel Furey Stage 1: Exit Gynecologist’s Office Jules is usually a screamer, but this is beyond screaming. The worst of birthday presents. Like a fucking pinata breaking open inside of her. Her breath…

Romana Iorga This Silence Is the Largest I Could Find It has no doors, no windows.Yes, you may crawl inside it, but you must dig.I don’t know how long it will take.What spade? Use your fingers, your toes.Your teeth, if…

Ellen June Wright And miles to go before I sleep (after Robert Frost) Mother is nocturnal. Moments of freedom come late into the evening. After everyone has gone to bed, she finds the strength, at 99, to rise and roam—knowing…

G. H. Mosson Sharing the Wound I like it here, beyond signposts and summaries, says the painter Clyfford Still to a friend who’s moving to the hill country “forever.” Yes, says Still, we all should disappear into what we must…

Emma Thomas Jones Photo of Father on a Motorcycle Looking like a Beatle: bowled hair thick and sideswept. Corner of sun catching cattails, swinging to a silent tune, bike draped in sugar crystals—glazed leather seats, white stripes bleached and my…

Connie Jordan Green These Bones at Eighty-Four These bones grow brittle as we age, the limber shock- absorbing joints of our youth now gnarled knuckles that scarcely grip a pencil. And what of fish bones, skeletons thin as a wish…