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Parenting

Readers Write

Fantasy

Calling a 1-900 number, moving to the tropics, writing fan fiction

By Our Readers February 2024
Poetry

What If Pain No Longer Ordered the Narrative

She’ll replace me with another beloved one day, as children do, and if I don’t let her, I’ll have failed, a different failure than those nights she brings me books to read when I’m too tired.

By Erin Hoover January 2024
Poetry

Last Bath

It hasn’t happened yet: the awkward bloom / of my children’s bodies, the bathroom pin-lock / pushed in, the steady stream of marathon showers, / bolts of thick steam all shadowy blue.

By Jared Harél December 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Macho Baby

I know that what we call hate is sometimes love that was pushed under a rock, love deprived of light and water. “Tell me to what you pay attention,” writes the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset in his book Man and Crisis, “and I will tell you who you are.” How much love is putrefying inside boys this very moment, starved for nourishment?

By Nicole Graev Lipson December 2023
Readers Write

Dirt

Shining shoes, spreading gossip, growing plants in prison

By Our Readers December 2023
Readers Write

Gratitude

A second chance at work, a shared meal in the classroom, a helpful stranger at a rest stop

By Our Readers November 2023
Readers Write

The American Dream

An Indian immigrant, an oil-company man, a bicycle-riding nomad

By Our Readers October 2023
Poetry

Smoke Memories

My mother and I were alone the night / our house burned down. I was nine that summer, / and the smell of smoke clung to my clothes. / And after the fire a tree in the yard / grew crooked with scoliosis, its back bending / away from the remains of the house.

By Doug Ramspeck October 2023
Poetry

I Eat My Words

Yes, it’s cruel. An unseemly gluttony. / Trapping the ortolan buntings, forcing / them to gorge in the dark, mouthfeel of seeds / their only comfort in that closed, blank space.

By Leona Sevick September 2023
Poetry

The Tunnel

It started with the mouse in the grass by the sidewalk, ants / crawling on its face. Aidan wanted to touch it. I drew him back / and held him. We talked about the gray fur and the tiny ants. He asked / if the mouse was going to go home to his mama and daddy. / No, I told him, the mouse won’t get to go home again.

By Donovan McAbee September 2023