and the thumb you lived under, and the life you’d
built that somehow turned around
only to smother you.
Read it in Small Orange
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“Sincerely,” by Molly Zhu
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“Untitled Wild Geese Game” by Vidya Rajan
[sorry Mary Oliver] [sorry House House]
you do not have to be good
(you are horrible)
you do not have to walk on your knees
(you have no knees) (your feet are webbed)Read it in Cordite Poetry Review
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“Standing around the Hearts” by Gary Fincke
…All twenty of us stood around the cow’s heart Miss Hutchings unwrapped on her desk. “Inside and out,” she said, “we need to know ourselves,” halving that heart with a scalpel to show us auricles, ventricles, valves, and the wall well-built or else.
Read it in Bending Genres
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“Yarn” by Allison Thung
and until the next project came along,
I sat probable,
amidst other skeins of yarn
unchanged or rewound or a fraction
of what they were when they began,Read it in Juniper
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“The Baker’s Story” by Rob Carney
She thought it might be funny,
and a little bit romantic:leaving him a trail of muffin tops
to their room.Read it in Terrain
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“The Tale of Molly Grimm” by Janet Burroway
“Shorter,” said Breda Grimm. “It grows like a weed.”
Molly said nothing. But when Mae began to clip, she winced—as when you cut your finger or scrape your knee.
The blood began to flow, dribbling first out onto the lavender cape, thin rivulets that splashed on the lino. Molly watched as each individual hair, swollen with it, began to drip and then to flow.
Read it in Cleaver Magazine
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“The Next Story” by Carol Guess
Sometimes you peel an orange in a careful curl and wrap the peel around your wrist. You draw a clock face on the peel with marker. Starting now it’s noon forever.
Sometimes the door opens and Plot rushes in, scarf around her neck, matte red lipstick. Sometimes she’s running away, sometimes chasing. When her scarf slips off, you pick it up.
And every impulse tells you to wind the story around her neck and pull it tight enough to tie a bow.
Read it in Tupelo Quarterly
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“Grateful Birds” by Ashley Steineger
The jackhammer outside the Marlton sings sweet as the ovenbird
whose call was described as pure clusterfuck by the professorin my late-bloomer-lesbian birdwatching club.
Read it in The Lumiere Review
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“A Letter from the Sea of Love” by Rafael Alvarez
Tripping my nuts off, hanging out the porthole, my head just a foot above the waterline as the ship pushed through, spray soaking my head as I stared up at the stack and the stars, everything twirling like flying lampshades. Oooh, oooh, ooooh—BLACK DIAMOND!
Read it in The Vincent Brothers Review
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“Dressing the Bear” by Susan L. Leary
This time, we give the body shoes. The body of a bear
my brother is building at a factory in the mall to give
to the girl he’s loved since the sixth grade. I’m there to pay
for the bear & to speak of none of itRead it in Up the Staircase Quarterly
A Quiet Root 