My wife quit smoking again when she got hired full time at the community college. After that we didn’t go to the Pub anymore. She couldn’t watch strangers light up, and she didn’t want to run into her comp students playing pool. We took to drinking our evenings on our back deck, where she would […]
Great Moments in Popular Music, in Motion: Justin Bieber, My World 2.0, “Baby” by Manjula Martin
April 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Baby, baby, baby. All the twelve-year-old girls in France like this pretty young man’s pop song, but not Marie, because she’s too cool. The second day of my visit to her father, I give her a blank notebook and a tin box with pictures of bicycles on its lid, marooned items from my heavy baggage […]
“The Story of My Hands” by Caitlin Matson
April 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment
When I was a little girl I believed there was a clock in my heart, one with little hands that would tick forever. I wish someone had told me how easily those hands could be broken, how quickly the clock could stop, how there is no rewind button. If I had known, I would have […]
Three poems by Victoria Lynne McCoy
April 4, 2012 by 2 Comments
Burial Grounds When an elephant comes across abandoned skeletons, she will nudge the scattered bones and tusks, build a grave of branches, stay silent for days. She will know her way back to them. When the needle first drilled into the skin taut across my rib cage and tender breast tissue, then deeper, the tattoo […]
“No One Left” by Annam Manthiram
April 2, 2012 by 6 Comments
Any time Carla willed it, the people disappeared. First her mother who slapped her across the face when she was despondent. Then her father who visited her at night when he was careless. Later on it was her boyfriend. He didn’t love her in the right way. Then it was her best friend because she […]
