Issue 22 / Summer 2020 I swallow joy in pill-capsules, two a night, hoping that while I sleep—if I sleep—the joy will seep into the empty cavities of my body and stop my bones from trembling in the morning when my dreams of somewhere else dissolve into the reality of...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 I.Seasonal Vigilance Then, in the beam of the flashlight, there’s a copperhead, dull rust against black pavement, moving, head up. Slow and inefficient, I think; it doesn’t seem like it’s getting anywhere, but it is moving with...
Issue 22 / Summer 2020 Pouring myself another cup of coffee, I scanned the letter I’d just pulled from its envelope. “Dearest Melinda, love of my life, salvation of my soul,” it began. This prisoner really was laying it on thick. Five pages of hackneyed declarations...
Issue 21 / Spring 2020 I remember my grandfather happy. I remember how he cheered as he drove us up the hill in his front yard in the small town of Hope, New Jersey. His John Deere Tractor going up, up, up, so we could sled down the snowy mountain only to go to...
Issue 21 / Spring 2020 Every now and then during my childhood, my mother would put our family through the tumult of trying out a new church, but it never really took. A divorced mother of four little kids didn’t fit in, not in the South, not in the early...
