James Tadd Adcox

DISEASES, DISORDERS, BREAKS
listen to an excerpt from this story

There are of course, girls and girls; yet at heart they are pretty much alike. For man, the over-grown boy, life has commonly two, and only two, sides: work, and play. When the father of a boy wishes to arrange a marriage [...]

Melissa Broder

Rubbernecking Brushy Creek

I was eating patty melts with little Jilly
at the House of Pies when I first read about

the homicide in Hutto. Somebody’d left
their Statesman next to my juice glass, and I saw

the word found from the corner of my eye, then
dead. I remember Britney Spears was singing

yeah yeah yeah [...]

Gabe Durham

Parable of Me and the Adult Diapers and the Gift Basket

Got a call from a young woman who knew of an old neighbor on her street who could use some adult diapers. “Is there any way,” she said, “you could arrange to get her some?” I said, “Sure we can [...]

Kaitlin Dyer

As Lovers Do
listen to this poem

We traded aortas

under the Ballerina Magnolia that had already bloomed

and wilted

and dropped its petals to our feet. You called

for 5-0 surgical silk

to stitch

the artery in its place: Don’t forget the gauze.

Don’t leave the gauze in my chest.

Emily Howorth

Look Away Dixieland

Last Friday I invited friends over for drinks at my duplex. I didn’t do anything fancy—just threw together a plate of Gouda, Wheat Thins, and store-bought tapenade. I put on the Temptations and poured myself a big cold glass of Pinot Grigio. It was when [...]

Alexandra Isacson

She Loved Anything With Wings

1. Vermilion Flycatchers

They drank Long Island Iced Teas lounging by their flaming fireplace. She watched the rain pouring down outside the window. A flock of birds swooped across the blooming apple trees, taking cover beneath their porch. The birds chattered and blushed. [...]

Kevin Kaiser

MANAGE A TROIS

I. BEAT

I walk in on my heart in bed with someone else’s heart. The vital organs pulse, over a hundred beats per minute. The white sheets beneath them are soaked in a dark red splotch, as if they’re both menstruating.

Putting two and two together and not liking the [...]

Victoria Lynne McCoy

On the Day It Became Legal to Rape Your Wife

Somewhere, a couple celebrated
an anniversary, laid out a blanket
beneath a chandelier of willow tree,
pressed into each other so carefully
not even the fallen leaves broke open.
Somewhere, a woman cleared her throat
and a man who spoke only enough body
language to translate this as [...]

Teresa Milbrodt

Mr. Chicken

I’m taking inventory in the walk-in freezer, have my hat and gloves on and am counting packages of sandwich buns, when one of my employees barrels through the door to tell me Mr. Chicken is back.   She shivers in her green Golden Lotus blouse, grabs my elbow, drags [...]

Traci O’Connor

five-gallon bucket

My dog’s ribs knock against each other like tin cans, and she runs loud clanky z’s through the field.   I hit the dewberry bushes with my fishing pole because cottonmouths like to hide beneath them in dark places so warm and sweet.

The sign on the fence says No [...]

R.D. Parker

Stillness
listen to this poem

From the defoliated fixed point
in the ex-forest, Mr. Zero
stares into the vanishing point.
At the vanishing point, no one
stares back at portly Mr. Zero.
There is no shot / reverse shot
except as you pan across the scene
in these restless words.
In these restless words,
Madame Seventy-Three calls
for an end to abstractions.
Madame [...]

Anne Leigh Parrish

SNOW ANGELS

At first it was nothing.   Then it fell harder, and they had to slow down.   Cory had never liked snow, even from inside a warm place.   As a child she thought it sucked color from the world, a comment that made her family laugh.   For [...]

Johnny Peters

Science

Samuel was frustrated by the limits of language—its inability to fully express his profound thoughts regarding his feelings and desires. He felt imprisoned by the tongue given him, and restrained by the speech of his people. No words could adequately describe all that went on in his passionate mind. [...]

Joseph Riippi

Something About Birthdays

This happens: I am sitting in the basement of the old house in Tacoma, in the leather chair my mother will make my father sell the summer we move to the house in the valley. I am trying to make sense of the huge metal computer on the [...]

Ani Smith

How to do your makeup like a star

Would love to look like that for you. A stroke against my favor is that you deem me so inappropriate. Especially after drugs or sex my lips redden and puff. You can always tell from the lips and the empty saucer eyes in [...]

David Frederick Thomas

“Hanging Is The New Hugging: A Six Cassette Path To Becoming A True Modern  Father With Dr. Daniel H. Nelson, Ph.D.”
listen to this story

Charlie had a wart on the bottom of his foot, brown and textured like dirt stuck to sap.   In the first couple of years, as their [...]

Tim Tomlinson

FACEBOOK TANKA #13

Facebook friends are like
dirty socks at the laundry –
For each friend I add,
two go missing inside
the empty machine I search.

Arts & Leisure

We held hands through all of Rocco and his Brothers.
Now, we’re divorced.

When the brutal brother Simone raped Nadia, you covered
your eyes with my hand.

That was touching.   [...]

Ocean Vuong

Revelation
listen to this poem

Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us.

In the path of trembling hands,
the hair on our thighs rose
against the night, and I dreamed
the extraordinary things
light would do to the parts I touched:
tuft of hair, [...]

Kate Wyer

Only in Motion
listen to this story

The daughter has been willing herself into a collision since thirteen. The daily preparation of this task has diminished her social ability. She tends to think only of motion, of the way the body loses itself to force, the way bones will only bear so [...]

xTx

Do You Have a Place For Me?

Let’s make each other
cry

Let’s take a weekend
to do it

Clear your schedule
we can stay up all night

I will collect your hair
with my mouth
Use the strands
to sew the slices
in my heart

We can try to fix
before we break

Blood on the floor

then on the pillows

There is a place
on [...]