We played guns in the backyard, taking cover in the suburban rubble of rusted water heaters, broken bicycles, and empty cattle trailers. Our orange-tipped barrels targeting each other with naive fingers pulling crescent moon triggers until caps snapped, the smell of burnt matches. And then the screams of who won: who was alive and who was dead? Time pushed its palms against us, dividing friends as it likes to do. He would play guns in Afghanistan, clearing houses in the heat

The room was uncomfortably hot today, or maybe it was the thick cotton of Mildred’s stuffy old dress. Either way, she was tempted to cut her hair into one of the stylish bobs rather than creating a faux bob every morning. It would certainly save her time and cool her off considerably. Mildred wished the office would turn the AC up or move to a building that had windows, but she knew the higher-ups didn’t care that much about the gals in the basement. A blinking yellow light a

The first thing to remember when dyeing your own hair is that dyeing your hair isn’t permanent. Now, this may seem obvious, but when that little plastic bowl gets filled with dye and you’re trapped in a chair by a towel and social convention, or as you sit in your basement with a cardboard box and a tiny page of folded instructions, you will want to remember, before you remember anything else, that hair dye Is. Not. Permanent. *** Standing as the best friend of a woman I admi

I. I wear a potato salad smile, yellow Kind of squishy but soft like a “my mom makes it better” – don’t you know? Still disappointing, but a quiet type Like you were expecting not to taste What you wanted potatoes to taste like II. My finger gets stuck in the hole Of a plastic picnic table with the bench Attached at the side – you know the ones That leave honeycomb crescent marks on Bare thighs you promised mom you wouldn’t Bring today like she expected you to listen III. Her

Yesterday you were slow Down crosswalk sign Yellow and curved like an Apostrophe, comma, slow Down there are children here Avoiding you. Today you are still curved But speckled Brown leopard print hickies Speak of the heavy kiss of air In the heat of nighttime chemistry A disease, it moves on To your cousins Huddled around you -ex stealers and tattletales A medley of thrown fists That don’t have any weight but leave marks all the same. Tomorrow you will still be curved But sh

It was a clear autumn’s evening when the old man first crept into the bedroom where Hank and his wife Debby slept. The old man pulled himself in through the open window, opened to welcome in the breeze into their stuffy, second floor bedroom. That’s what confused Hank the most. No man, young or old, should have been able to pull themselves through that window. Coupled with the fact that he was unable to move his body, Hank slowly relaxed his breath. It was a bad dream, a nigh

There is freedom in the tide that pushes and pulls against damp sand. The briny breeze dances with the foam lapping at the shore. The beach turns to clay as I walk out into the gradient blue. I threaten not to turn back, but the flicker of fins root me in the sinking sand. I sit cross-legged on the carpet with a present in my lap. It’s soft. That’s never a good sign. Every kid dreads clothing as a birthday present, but I rip at the shimmery paper anyway. They’re jeans. The de

Editor's Choice It’s a cool July morning and I was supposed to be at work three hours ago, but I called out. I can’t go in. I’m sick today, though if I told my boss what with he’d probably tell me to suck it up and come in anyway. That’s what they told me last time, but they don’t get it. I really can’t come in. So, instead, I’m a hundred miles away at the edge of a residential area on the southern edge of Kanab. Through the muddy sludge of a parking lot lies the base of the

Editor's Choice Sherry Stills sat alone at her table, poking the ice in her glass, ignoring the vibration of her phone, and scanning the bar for someone she could follow to a hotel bedroom. It was a Tuesday night at the Rusted Nail and the last call was soon approaching. The usual handful of patrons wandered the place like moths around a lampshade. They ordered their final rounds, stumbled over the knotted floors, and balanced themselves with the help of flimsy billiard table

To be a prophetess of old Marble shrines, Gilded with whispers of praise Bangles on arms And ankles and throat Empty eyes staring at walls Lips murmuring nonsense “It’s a gift from the gods.” Tell that to Cassandra Cursed by Apollo Endowment turned liability Tell that to every woman Taken from her home, never to return Sanity fractured It is no mosaic of broken pieces Tell that to us Who see too much and Understand too little Every person blessed by the divine Faces a life of

I wake to a clammy palm covering my mouth Paris’ eyes are feverish, Possessive and possessed Coarse fabric chafes against my cheeks And bloodied wrists My husband sleeps while I’m carried away The ship reeks of rotting wood and fish They treat me like a whore, Leering at me I feel fingers on my skin Even as I sleep with the door locked, One person with keys Paris visits me every night, But I am not clay to be molded Into a royal Trojan concubine I am not a trinket to be stole

Last night a faceless goddess Visited me in a dream Another appeared beside her Beautiful and awful The blank face Issued a warning “Never stop for a golden apple.” The other one laughed I started running But I felt strings on my back Keeping me in place The luminous one Moved me like a marionette When the apples appeared My body picked them up Until my arms were full Of rotting fruit

An imitation of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens I. Among twenty high school classrooms, The only moving thing Was the trigger of the firearm. II. I was of three minds Like a safe In which there are three firearms. III. The firearm kicked in the autumn woods. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV. A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a firearm Are one. V. I do not know which to fear, The weight of the firearm Or the size of the bulle

The sun pours down like honey, soaking into scaly lizards. Coyotes thrive on untouched land and homegrown bird gizzards. Sweet days birth glorious winds that emulate howls. Star glazed nights flourish a bounty of land guarded by little owls. The pour of yearened rain kisses the ears of grateful cactus prickles. Each honest acre of land remains at its purest when left untouched by sickles. An unspoken history of natural creation found in rocks colored the absolute reddest. She

there was never anything until suddenly there was, and it turns out it had all been here all along matter creates matter destroys matter, but tell me, what’s the matter, darling? don't you know that i can see the moon in your eyes, all craters and imperfection and life and strength and love? did you know that i can see the beginnings of myself all the way up until it ends with you, you, you, you with your vulcan love of everything they say that love is all sunny days and gree

Let us shed our skins and dance with our jittery bones and pumping organs beneath the light of God’s false eye. Let us braid each other’s hair and kiss our thin lips together in prayer, for I pray only to you, to you and the water in your eyes. Our skin is too thin; let us be snakes. Let us wrap our bodies like tide pools ‘round each other and twist until there’s nothing left of us but seashells and wet sand. Let us be snakes and uncoil. Let us be snakes and tempt each other

Henrietta Mara walked to the edge of the lake. Henrietta unlaced her shoes and tossed them onto the moon-drunk sand. She peeled away her long wool socks and let her toes sink into the coarse sand, her skin a murky grey underneath the ceiling of stars. Her father had bought her these socks. He had bought them, he’d told her, for hiking in the summertime. He’d take her, he’d said, to the same spot his father used to take him. Where he and his father had lain out in the open air

My breath is blood. My blood is air. There’s a busy frantic dying thing shackled to the inside surface of my skull, Trying to grow webs of connections to replace the brain That it just realized was nothing but a giant gas planet, Not a rock, Not a stable thing, Not an anchor. Jupiter’s breath is blood too, A bloody sea three times the size of this whole planet and I think Jupiter is a terrible brain to have. To not have.

her skin sparkles below her 1920s pearls her long tassel skirt snags on the branches she bakes her lovely pies with rotten apples toasts her crystal glass sipping her cider champagne to avoid smearing red lips she picks her teeth with cockroach feet and lights candelabras in tortured trees begging for a guest to greet the empty hallways of her art deco cottage a flaky golden crust with life’s worms crawling within sweet filling like a princess she is a witch in the forest wis