Timothy Hill From the geese-shit-stained asphalt path the lake looks muddy steel. Students pass by glazed by the cloudless spring...

Payal Nagpal Potential Beard Number Five texts me. He suggests dinner at the Marina; another waterfront fusion restaurant in downtown...

Rose Malone The ordinariness of things shuddered to a halt. Janice heard the four-note signal of Fintan’s computer shutting down. The...

Beth Brown Editor’s note—this selection is an excerpt from a novel called Saint Jane, which will be published in 2025 It was your idea,...

Vania Martin Snow falls like feathers, silent and soft. From my seat at the bar, I watch the snow fall, tucked up in the warmth of an...

Molly Terrill New York City December 1950 Christmas day came and went, passing by outside Barlow’s miniscule apartment on Grove Street...

Christopher Flakus His house stood on a paved asphalt street, sprinklers chittering over his perfectly manicured lawn under a sky the...

For Margaret John Long The house and land of childhood meant home to me. Every inch of house the acre of land I knew completely,...

for my mother Ruth Friedland, died April 13, 2018 Paula Panzarella The month of your death, green stalks pierce through ground. In a week...

for Brittany Watts Anita Durkin In a throat like a needle, Air is vibration is delicate trills Absorbed in earth. And the men whistle Few...

(For Bill Chisholm) Thomas Lawrence Long Beloved to you Phoebus Apollo I give myself. As a boy I played, Innocent in your day’s eye ...

Sandy Carlson Childhood chores required me to go outdoors And wonder about tree universes: The music of leaves in life, dying, death. The...

John Muro The tides have fallen back from shore and the harbor’s become a sprawl of whimsical ruin, wide and still and without ruffle,...

D. Walsh Gilbert The door of the ship’s hold opens— Unruffled sheets of ocean waves unroll onto beach sand white and fine as powder on a...

Stephanie Pushaw Barrier Island The first three months I lived in Galveston, Texas, I couldn’t leave the house in the daytime. From June...