Fat Girl by Melissa Grossman
“Fat Girl” by Melissa Grossman I carry the weight of being a fat girl. I bear the indelible sledgehammer taunts: my brothers call me “tank” people say, “how beautiful” I’d be if I “just lost weight.” I wear the weight like battle armor, swallow my anger. I carry the raw egg of my future on a spoon. ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Melissa Grossman’s...
Safety by Kimarlee Nguyen
“Safety” by Kimarlee Nguyen I do not know where I can go. When I was eleven, I climbed to the top of the concrete shed in the backyard and looked down. The dirt was in a pile a few feet below me but I imagined it as the end of a deep, deep valley. I was wearing a hand-me-down dress from my cousin who is much skinnier than I was (or ever will be) and the elastic waist cut deep into my stomach. I pulled down...
Ordinary Sophie by Karen Heuler
“Ordinary Sophie” by Karen Heuler I don’t need to stand out in a crowd. The others do, of course; they want to be special. No one who “wants” to be special is special. The special want something specific. I find wanting to be repulsive; the neediness drags people down, puts weights on their legs; they can’t get free of it. I exist; I touch things; I move on. I am 16 and no one else in my family is 16 right...
Tulip Girl by Michel Wing
“Tulip Girl” by Michel Wing They said, Ignore her. Shut the door. Give up this hunt. What matters, one pebble in a wall of stone, one cry in a torrent of sound? But tulip girl, I see you, dark tips skirted round, your bruised petals dancing in night. No matter how cold the garden, cruel the hoe, there you are, glory, spark, shine. ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here...
The Difference Between a Child and Offspring by Melva Sue Priddy
“The Difference Between a Child and Offspring” by Melva Sue Priddy The muddy-hoofed sow farrows on her side, fastened in the log pen, a wooden gate shoved up to fasten her in. She heaves and grunts. “Climb in,” he orders and I slip to the ground beside her. If she tried, she couldn’t see her other end, the swollen vulva swollen. And they will birth from that end, this year’s litter. “She’ll eat them all,” he...
In a Shark’s Mouth by Nicole Lacy
“In a Shark’s Mouth” by Nicole Lacy Someone once told me about the man-eating muskies in Lake Erie. Someone else swore there were snapping turtles big enough to take off toes and fingers. I stopped swimming, even though Grandma assured me that the stories of pikes picking off Great Lakes waders were myths. But because I was a curious girl, it wasn’t long before I learned about the bull shark, which can...
Spring by Chloe Honum
“Spring” by Chloe Honum Mother tried to take her life. The icicles thawed. The house, a wet coat we couldn’t put back on. Still, the garden quickened, the fields were firm. Birds flew from the woods’ fingertips. Among the petals and sticks and browning fruit, we sat in the grass and bickered, chained daisies, prayed. All that falls is caught. Unless it doesn’t stop, like moonlight, which has no pace to speak...
Unfettered by Melva Priddy
Unfettered by Melva Priddy A meandering god stepped into silence when I was three years old, settled and spoke with me inside the dappled edge of maples, oaks and cedars across the road. Unfettered, I melded with dirt, clay, tree trunks and stone. Doleful and pliant mud, worked from yesterday’s rain which persisted in widening the gully across the front field, we molded into dishes, laid them aside. Red clay. Red bowls....
The grasshopper, the hawk, and the squash vine by Felice Wyndham
“The grasshopper, the hawk, and the squash vine” by Felice Sea Wyndham She sat under the plum tree. Gobs of sap had oozed out of the trunk in spots and dried into clear purplish lumps. This garden behind the wattle and daub washroom was overrun with squash plants. Their vines reached up into the lower branches of the plum tree, cascades of orange trumpet blooms along their lines of growth. She had come to...
Space Invaders by Roxanna Bennett
“Space Invaders” by Roxanna Bennett Childhood: recurring UFO’s illuminated her nights, ladders swung from stratospheric heights, detached manner of the doctors who sliced and examined her small parts, cataloguing ribs, spine, clavicle, femurs in their labelled containers, cubed the meatier bits, murmured over their findings before the cure and connect, numb reconstruct, then the body’s transfer to the bed miles...
Float by Wendy Miles
“Float” by Wendy Miles 1. An open door. A child pauses on a step. Her head turns, lifts to hear her name float above the yard. A child is an open door. The child holds her breath at the thought of what it means —her name—stills to hook it to herself with a bright pin. A child is a breath. A name is a bright pin. 2. A low sink. An open window. A mother leans at the low sink, shirt off, breasts pressed to a towel....
Someone Blundered by Leonore Hildebrandt
“Someone Blundered” by Leonore Hildebrandt For nothing was simply one thing. Virginia Woolf While father paces and declares, mother takes a moment by the window. In her own room, the girl finds that words are emboldened by the sounds of waves–– the other Lighthouse was true too. Here the picture wants a daub–– perhaps this time it is their boat. The girl is...
Solitary Prism by Kathleen Hellen
“Solitary Prism” by Kathleen Hellen —at the House of Inscriptions, Little Moreton Hall, Aug. 3, 1649 in this custom of the bride—a girl The beautiful gardens encircling The trefoils and the quatrefoils as rings inside of rings The long gallery where the Queen herself had danced The magnificent bay where panes were scored on upper-storey windows The “a” looks like an...
Three-Legged Foal by Yania Padilla Sierra
“Three-Legged Foal” by Yania Padilla Sierra Who built this pen I am kept in? Stark and sterile, no tender grass For my tender mouth. No sweet bales to lie on. Run I would, if walk could I. I am a three-legged foal. In the amniotic ocean A lovely cinder Venus was I, ‘til Father cracked his whip, splitting the mare And in so doing was I. Mare a gnashing Fury in her anguish. I proffered my leg-Mother, maim I....
The Gift of Veneer by Melva Sue Priddy
“The Gift of Veneer” by Melva Sue Priddy -after Li-Young Lee To keep me facing the hole in the veneered door hung just that week in our two year old bathroom where none had hung before, he sat on the side of the bed and pulled me between his legs. Had you entered, then, you would have thought you saw a man who cared. “You see that door. You see that hole.” I was transfixed his voice so unexpectedly careful; I looked...
La Guapa by Marianela Medrano
“La Guapa” by Marianela Medrano No one has ever seen a Ciguapa, but Grandma and Grandpa told me the story so many times that it became reality. Tia Ceci, Mami and Papi, told it to me so many times that it got recorded in my cells the way important things are recorded. If you don’t believe me, ask Nelly. She also heard the same story. The two of us listened as if there was nothing else to do in the world...
Sunday Morning by Jeanne Bryner
“Sunday Morning” by Jeanne Bryner Mama stands blotting her red lipstick and the tired Bible waits on our gray kitchen table. We have a nickel for the collection plate. We whine because Ben gets to carry the nickel. Ben will drop it, we say. Mama is firm. We wear strawberry pink dresses, the boys wear blue sailor suits. Bacon grease is Mama’s scent. Nancy scrapes cornmeal mush into Sam’s bowl, he gulps. Glass...
My Father on His Deathbed by Cynthia Robinson Young
“My Father on His Deathbed” by Cynthia Robinson Young …except he didn’t have one. His deathbed was an alley street, far away from comfort. He was abandoned, lonely, confused, staring at a needle he had anchored into his arm, not meaning to draw his life out. Staring into streetlights until they become stars, he wonders what will happen next In a world he believed he created with his family, and now believes...
Sweater Girl by Darlene Taylor
“Sweater Girl” by Darlene Taylor I rocked my knees, trying not to pee on myself. Thunder rattled the basement windows. Rain seeped through cracks, glistening on the wall like wet glue. I crossed my legs, uncrossed them, and crossed them again. Unable to hold it any longer, I stood. Girl, Mama said. I need the bathroom, I said. It was a good excuse. When the lady at the Woolworth counter in Richmond said...
Angels and Saints by Chloe DeFilippis
“Angels and Saints” by Chloe DeFilippis She kissed her hand then placed it on the foot of a saint. She lit a votive candle. I did the same. On either side of St. Michael’s Church were tall, plaster statues of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. As a little girl, I thought they’d come to life. I thought this trick—kissing the foot, lighting the candle—meant what my mother told me: If you pray to a saint, they’ll...
I have not yet written a single page by daylight.
Harriet Jacobs
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