During the two weeks they were in the cabin, Andi painted everything grayscale. The lampshades were salt and pepper and the rotting floors were charcoal. She made murals of black on white brick. They sat on flaking used furniture that looked and felt like concrete. Every morning, when Shot brought in wood for the fire, Andi sprayed it down until all the pieces turned to…
Separation by Jeremy Windham
I Dad shouts at my mother from the driveway, his truck hiccups then roars away from us and I kick a rock to the grass with my bare foot. We stand in our garage long after he is gone. Mom covers her mouth with one hand and uses the other to press my sister and I into her heaving chest until the lights flicker out…
Marcus by Katie McGinnis
Marcus was a poet. A man pumped so full of lithium that his arms had swollen into sausages. So fat that I could hardly find his eyes. According to him, to his eyes, the world draped around the sky like a curtain. And who’s to say it doesn’t? That was his point. Marcus was also a philosopher. The man spoke nothing but poetry. Words didn’t…
December 31 by Anis Shivani
bernadette mayer how did you live through the bush years i didn’t win any prizes but winter surprised like a second childhood to the tenebrous nursery a decade late wolf spoor kept woman awake in the far cabin snowy light falling mute to the clomp of the bearish moon oh it’s been all right i know my length in meters i have my magic marker…
The Island by Margaret Adams
Today the sea is dark, but while the sky is too cloudy for the ocean’s surface to reflect blue sunlight, the water seems to hold a glow of its own. Tessa and I keep the big rolling doors at the front of the workshop open as often as possible, even if it means layering on an extra sweater or two; the shingled building faces the…