Header photograph © Charlotte Hamrick. Untitled document
In which joy and wonder are born out of darkness The bruises are gone but the ridges of your fingerprints can never be rubbed off by other, more gentle hands,…
Trigger warning: depictions of sexual abuse You bury your past between thighs open up secrets from graves disinterred lives saying kill the beast which does not look like you…
October 31, 1976 It was just after two in the morning when I finally stepped outside the bar and paused to light a cigarette. Exhausted, I leaned against the wall…
Back in October 1985, I woke up to the horses screaming. My parents weren’t home – they were spending the last of their paychecks line dancing and whiskey-tasting. They could…
Mother touches their face and blinks like Morse code. No one understands her. I translate and do the readings for our tribe. Sometimes she picks up her stick and hits…
Mamma says when tears salt my face and every slap of ocean rises up to close my eyes. She squeezes me tight. So tight I taste the sweat of breast…
He refuses to eat vegetables from our garden, says nothing grown half a mile from a steel mill can be safe. What about me, then? But I, I refuse to…
When Abraham came by after work to pick up Isaac and said he was taking him hunting on Mt. Moriah, Sarah cautioned them to be careful— look out for mountain…
I’m never afraid of what’s ahead unless it’s a mirror showing me what’s behind I don’t fear monsters, I fear stoves I don’t fear muddy boots, I fear house slippers…
First time you say I’m driving off the bridge I hyperventilate and wonder how I will survive, on flowered tile, the ridged linoleum remains, caffeine-free brown, of soda spills, wet…
we need a god who sits behind a keyboard in a dive bar every tuesday wearing a glittery blue button-down shirt to roast the patrons and regulars no one exempt…
It’s mid-morning when I walk the back road. Sunlight speckles through the leafy branches, its warmth burning the dew off ferns. And then I hear the coyotes call from deep…
