Dripping drama, drenched in camp
1994 & somehow we are free
To be merpersons, mer-made
To whip our wild hair deliciously
Teenage daughters of a muscular sea-king
Read it in Taco Bell Quarterly
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“Princess Diaries No. 3: Pool” by Caleb Nichols
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“Natural History” by Harryette Mullen
Enclosed in their fragile dome, a bunch of big-boned lizards that never glanced at a hominid, never voted in an election, never built a machine, composed a melody, or solved an equation. Neither have they pondered the meaning of life, nor funded their retirement.
Read it in A Gathering of the Tribes
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“At the Hardware Store I Realize, As Usual” by Amorak Huey
I’ve forgotten to measure. I have no clue
what size screw I need to fix the shower door
or if it’s even a screw I need. I mumble
the screw I need until I’m blushing,
driving home undone, job delayed to another day,
a disappointment to my family in ways small enough
they’d never say so aloud.Read it in Defunct
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“The Great Fact was the Land Itself” by Joe Wilkins
The chalked pelvic brim of an elk
shot through with hard stars of lupine
is a metaphor for the absence
of God, though if by God
you mean coyotes,
the metaphor fails.Read it in Juxtaprose
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“Three Acts of Self-Actualization” by Lisa Muschinski
I was no Susan Backline, no Toni Collette, no murder victim, no girl screaming. But I couldn’t back out—not halfway through a breath, palms clamped around my jaw. So, I went through with it, with the moan, the sigh, the wail, until it tapered to a cough.
Read it in SmokeLong Quarterly
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“The In-Between” by Foster Trecost
“…It was the final preparation, presented as a laminated note card, that lasted long past elementary: The Rules: Never Deviate – No Stopping – Speak to no one. Below these directives, typed in ominous boldface, was a warning: There will be consequences. Fifth grade, that’s when it started. And it never stopped.”
Read it in Halfway Down the Stairs
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“Polar Bear” by Carol Hobbs
It is her or them on the open water. They push her with shovels
into the boat’s wake where she floats for a time, a waning moonRead it in Solstice
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“Out of the Harbor and Into the Open Sea” by Hannah Gersen
Then I birthed the placenta, and then, a few days later, in the privacy of my own home, I gave birth to another baby, a very tiny one, a girl. She fit in my palm.
Read it in Abandon
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“You Can’t Hear the Lizards Chewing” by Sage Ravenwood
You learn quickly
an adult’s silence hurts; you learn
your fear has teeth and eats everything
around you. You stop being afraid because
the silence has bigger teeth.Read it in House
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“Mom Belly Dances and Sees the Dead” by Daniella Toosie-Watson
…When I want to tell
her there are things to live for, I remember spirits of the dead
appear to her, and she envies them. Don’t look at me like that. You who livewithout magic and miracle.
Read it in The Recluse
A Quiet Root 