Small Bodies by Alexandra Reisner
“Small Bodies” by Alexandra Reisner A six-year-old child’s eyes are set only about three feet off the ground, which is probably why the girls saw it first. We were coming from the tennis courts when I noticed two or three of them crouching. “What is it?” I asked as I knelt to see what they saw. It was a mouse—a baby—on its side in the grass. Its head was touched with blood, but still its sides rose and fell...
Some Secrets by Debbie Urbanski
“Some Secrets” by Debbie Urbanski Outside this window there used to be a tree. This is the first secret. Now all I can see is the sky which, today, lacks personality, a plain blue streaked with predictable clouds. My neighbor cut the tree down. Is this the second secret? Let’s say, for now, that it’s not, that it is more a continuation of the first. This neighbor of mine plans to cut down more trees soon, or...
Black Swans: A Poem for Voices by Katharyn Howd Machan
“Black Swans: A Poem for Voices” by Katharyn Howd Machan We are the black swans, the women who swim. Who fly at night. Who are the night. Our golden feet touch quiet water, skim shining surface, plunge deep to make currents in dark weeds. We come and go. We know each other’s names, each other’s dreams; we dream each other. Dream the flight past ragged moon, past singing stars, and it comes true. Dream the...
Coming in Second by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal
“Coming in Second” by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal Body chilled by years of neglect, my twin lies in a hospital bed trying to grasp how she’s come to this. The sum of my fears she’s the one person I dread I could be, save for some kink in our link of genetic fiber. Struggling not to catch her death of cold, I’ve steered clear of her notion that our birth was not just conceptual happenstance. Yet at times, I find...
Unity Orders by Kate Simonian
“Unity Orders” by Kate Simonian Hot stuff. Just-what-the-doctor-Orders. Five-foot-ten at twelve-and-a-half years old, with a body to be reckoned with, a body with curves we had just learned to describe as convex. Unity would have been memorable for her name alone—a sentence unto itself, one teacher said—but over the summer she’d developed a larger-than-life sex drive to boot. Libido had left her crooked. Her...