Photo Story: Wait

By Yash Seyedbagheri
Wait your turn, signs proclaim. Wait for Chinese food. Wait to pick up cocktails from the bar, your only Friday night friends now.

Lipstick

By Sarah Freligh
We learned to paint our mouths kissable, but were taught not to. By the parish priest, by our mothers, by Seventeen magazine.

Photo Story: Breaths Caught on His Echoes

By C. B. Stuckey
When he burned, she watched from the window as the casket shifted toward the chamber, as the cardboard lid vibrated ...

Aweful

By Hannah Miet
She hated how easily he slept, his body draped on a diagonal across the bed. She could fit only when she curled herself into a ball.

Asparagus Pee

By Kim Magowan
Two days into the grim, doomed camping trip, Regina called off their wedding.

In Every Girl There Is ...

By Jonathan Cardew
In every forest there is a cabin. In every cabin there is a stove. In every stove there is an ash pile.

Michelle Ross
How easily the runner could have crushed it. The inchworm’s camouflage, which conceals it from predators, makes the inchworm vulnerable to the human jogging along neighborhood sidewalks, the human who does not intend the inchworm harm.

Book Review: The Inexpl...

By Beret Olsen
Chuck Augello's new book, The Inexplicable Grey Space Called Love, enthralled by the magic of words, potent even when I couldn’t fully understand them. Perhaps meaning cannot ever be seen in simple terms.

In This Drought

By Tommy Dean
Before, we blamed things on the rain: canceled parades, flooding and mudslides, flattened hair, postponed races, baseball games, our happiness.

Snowbird

By Maura Way
Doris’ balcony bends toward the sea. She is in a high rise looking down at birds. Gulls scream and fly north to the next resort.

Photo Story: Two Master...

We received a number of wonderful stories to this month's photo prompt, and we were stymied to pick a single winner, so please indulge us in presenting these two gems.

Aunt

By Edvige Giunta
The 30-year-old recording carries little of my father’s sister, no more than she was in life, ever-present shadow of her mother...

Drive

By Maria Zoccola
After the diagnosis, Aunt Jessie quit teaching and bought a racecar, oxy-white, a real hot ride.

Hindsight

By Lisa Ahn
Trouble came because we didn’t waterproof the birdhouse. The paint held up, at first: a child’s pastel palette that drew sparrows and made the tree look festive.