Theodora Ziolkowski – Pregnancy Doll
Pregnancy Doll On the farmhouse carpet was a doll. The doll wore a fluff of blond hair, a blue smock. Pregnancy Doll, we called her. To play with the doll, we pressed the stethoscope to her chest, listened to her heart. Prepping her with pretend ointment to reveal the grainy portrait of baby. Then we […]
Kathy Goodkin – Antinarrative
Antinarrative Let’s mount a staircase into memory, where the elevator is always broken– because it is summer and the dormitory is officially closed, shut against the city crows and pigeons, the fat sparrows like bullies lining the pavement, although people (we) continue to live here, unpermitted– into memory’s eighth floor, memory’s close quarters. It is […]
Tarn Wilson – First Marriage
First Marriage I spent what I earned on potato bread from a German bakery. Sometimes our only meal for days, we ate it by the fistful, We were young and hungry and our bodies could run on cheap chocolate and fallen apples from other people’s trees. Those first winters, ice blanketed our world: each blade, […]
Michelle Bitting – Lost in the Disco Ball
Lost in the Disco Ball No reason to fear the last or open call. When Twyla picked me to dance back in the 90’s, I died. It was heaven collapsing in the doorway after the sweaty all-day audition. Our rescue dog Harley came from an open call to adopt off the streets of Tijuana so […]
Mary Makofske – Risky Decisions Make the Best Stories
Risky Decisions Make the Best Stories But few want to live them. Better to lie awake under a bedside lamp while pursued by dogs than feel their teeth in your calf. Better to smuggle the drugs snuggled in your vagina while in an easy chair than submit to the full body search and handcuffs, the […]
