Explore

I take Saturday’s unpopulated trains, since there is no safety in numbers.

Here we were, seventeen, trapped by the sheer number of bodies.

Here is my father on the last day of his exceptionally long life.

I’ve made a rigorous effort. But it’s been hard, this hug embargo.

I bought the gun after my therapist said he wouldn’t have sex with me.

“Listen,” Mike said. “You’ve had a hard day. How about I drive you home?”

I want to be rapt around your linger, not Thumbelina under your dumb.

Writing at night just feels . . . sneaky. There’s an outlaw quality to it.

The illusion is so complete that it seems the world has been re-created.

People didn’t end marriages without warning, without second chances.

“Your mom is awake,” I said. “You need to go in and see her.”

To be married is to learn to love, captive in your own new country.

They couldn’t go to the Manson family caves because of nuclear radiation.

Everything comes down to the lightning. Nothing is ever by chance.

I was a skinhead in look and seem, a balding guy trying out the future.

The leaves repeat my fall in choruses more ancient than my own.

The photo portraits express the unguarded essence of each author.

Janet Burroway

I dream we ride together in a Subaru to the county fair.

I don’t know who he wants to be, and it’s not because I haven’t asked.

“Tell me that everything will be okay,” I whispered to the photo.

An ironic story about skepticism and education, in just six words.

Sue Mell

The person was seeing his printed face superimposed over his real one.

I put my arm around Larry’s shoulders and ask him to pull over.

“The rattlesnakes glow in the dark, man. You should see them.”

He wondered how others lived with their sins. Maybe they never did.

Clayton always imagined getting laid in the rooms of his dad’s motel.

Phuong feared that she was nothing but a regret born into flesh.