Small Talk at Evanston General by Beth Ann Fennelly
“Small Talk at Evanston General” by Beth Ann Fennelly And what is it you do? he asked, after a moment of silence. My mother was in the bathroom exchanging her dress for the cotton gown. I had the sense that he was asking to fulfill some kind of med school training: Engage the patient’s loved ones in conversation. Five outlandish occupations pinged through my head, all lies. But I knew I shouldn’t mess with...
When You’ve Been Sick for a Time by Susan Austin
“When You’ve Been Sick for a Time” by Susan Austin The surgeon threaded the catheter through my superior vena cava, let it dangle just above my heart. The young assistant scrubbed until I felt like pudding— Strange not to feel pain, only meaty burrowing. Sometimes the catheter rubs and my heart hiccups. When you’ve been sick for a time you give up all your secrets, you give up lies. I liked building puzzles...
Stef’s Request By Abigail Licad
“Stef’s Request” by Abigail Licad The night before the surgery she hands me her Nikon and asks me to photograph her naked hips and thighs — the only parts of her body left unscarred by the accident. In a trailer transporting horses from her mother’s farm, her beautiful twenty-two year-old body snatched by the collision’s conflagration, third-degree burns across seventy-percent of her skin, a permanent...
Leap by Susan Austin
“Leap” by Susan Austin Wind roars home after a windless winter. I listen to its long-haul howl, wonder how spring birds weather a force that tips thin-rooted aspen, rattles windows in their casings, doors in their jams, as if the wind is an intruder, or someone lost, or someone lonely. For a time I lived in a homestead cabin built by two brothers from St. Joe: craftsmen, bakers, one a fiddler who snowshoed...
Lupus Outwits Me, Declares Martial Law by Susan Eisenberg
“Lupus Outwits Me, Declares Martial Law” by Susan Eisenberg Who would dream to awaken from fevered sleep stun-gunned into paralysis by their own ruthless doppelganger: power stations overtaken in a pre-dawn coup; from every organ of the body a triumphant, unfamiliar flag! Who wouldn’t be humbled by their double’s brazen brilliance? Or, begin at once to plot in whispers the first frantic steps of resistance?...
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