...Byron Landry © 2016 Byron Landry 2016 Byron Landry Daddy Hid Fire You ever steal smokes from your daddy. The boy’s hair was sun- blond, brown at the roots. My daddy doesn’t smoke —​the brown- haired boy’s eyes were small in the light. He remembered the box of matches...

.... The closer Cleo gets to being a woman, the more people can’t get used to the way she looks; her hair and eyes are black as her daddy’s and her teeth are prettier. Cleo’s daddy’s name’s Delgado or close to that. His family’s from somewheres below Mexico. His hair was the first time you’d ever...

... around on crutches looking for the arrowhead, but he never found it. The day he gave up searching, he put up a For Sale sign in his front yard, packed up his van, and drove off to the plains of Montana, where, some say, he got to wearing cowboy hats. A month later, Jenny and her daddy moved...

...James Braun Copyright © 2020 James Braun 2020 James Braun Cardboard Castle Too early our daddy leave our farmy farm, driving to town in his Fix Em Up Truck to work on people, not for thems, he always say, on thems. Reason our daddy so good at being Surgeon Man? Cause he used to work at IKEA...

... damn thing without a degree, her coal-shoveling sugar daddy that pays the bills while his wife blows twenties and other men. He believes it after hours in the dark, wary of rock fall and loose women that laugh in the tunnels and run their nails up someone else’s back...

...! On to cornered wolverine protecting its young! On to the pinnacle: creature whose name shall not be uttered, who swoops down at any moment, lightning-quick, to strike at babies & nuns & red cross volunteers. O the fun to be had at summer camp—morning bugle brass glinting in the sun, daddy long-legs...

... and unlighted, how your bright face was never reflected in theirs. So we named again in the clearing—whore, limp dick, prick tease, Daddy's boy. You weren't an easy man to suffer, and I, no garden variety. Sometimes it was raindrop-brilliant, bat-fur...

... hands in her hair, how he’d like to spend a few years making sandwiches for her in a kitchen, the quaint linoleum kind. How he’ll lovingly wash and shake-dry her lettuce, slice the bread into cat’s ears every day. A baby crow out the window, Daddy Crow waiting...

..., hair still Nadelson  25 damp and sticking up over his forehead. “Daddy!” he calls. “I held my breath ten seconds this time.” When he receives no answer, he calls again, less certainly, “Daddy? Are you out there?” If he took one step...

... was supposed to know. My eyelids felt enormous. I said, Oh, yes. Oh, yes, wow. I sank into the cushions, soon heard only a sentence or two scattered among many as she spoke. Particles of neurons rose to the surface like tiny fish and scattered. A servant being flogged. In the shade, 127 degrees! Daddy said...

... these lesser features. He resembled the Burt Reynolds of Smokey and the Bandit in a bleary drunken way. “Hi, Daddy,” Melody said, slipping off her clogs and heading over to the pool. The hot concrete stung her feet. “How was school?” asked her father. “Okay...

... sends it every damn year, twice a year, on Christmas as well as her birthday. The front says my daddy is a fireman, but I can’t imag- ine her walking around in it, strangers asking her about a guy she doesn’t remember. I see the colors are red and black, not the blue and grey of the other shirts...

... plant a flag // it s one of passion, rigor, ambition, collisions, kinship Today, Madame President, we re all Adam and Eve and Steve . . . . . . 7 Whiteboy daddy longlegs turn your face toward me The face that could take a thousand lives & murder me a million times Belt loosened You re immortal You...

... ask, pulling the mallet from my tool belt and setting a lid and can on the bench between us. She stands, brings the mallet up over her head and swings hard, gritting her teeth while she does it. The lid goes flying, lands over by the fence. “He says he’d rather live with his daddy...

.... They would be loved, have a home, and were spared being thrust into foster care. None of us saw the stigma they’d endure. Schoolchildren can be mean. As a convict’s kid, there is no acceptable answer to “What does your daddy do?” Sporting events, musicals, any public outing...

... said his name to them before she went inside. He doesn’t want a doctor. What happened? Somebody shot him. With a gun? You see it? She shakes her head. Who shot him? You? No, she says. I never seen anybody shot before. My daddy killed a five-point...

...?’ And the kid says, ‘It’s temporary sterility. Temporary. I’m not ready to be a daddy, so I’m using it for birth control We laughed again, and the people around us stopped to look. They weren’t angry at us, just curious. “Well, Sniff hears that,” Sherm said...

.... Carole asks, Is that house where the bad witch and pizza guy live? Gina frowns. No, just a mommy, daddy, and baby. Eliot sidles over, paints a thick red streak across the roof, and says, The witch amputated the pizza guy s arms. Now blood is dripping down the chimney. Gina hisses Get away...

... the banks of the Mississippi with his daddy, a sapling’s branch in his hand with a length of his mother’s ten-cent nylon thread tied to it; a hook made from a sharpened length of wire; telling him sto- ries of catfish that trolled the muddy waters, beasts in fish bodies, big as boxcars...

....” “She was probably fucked by an uncle or something. Dude, don’t blame yourself.” “She left half her stuff behind, like, so I wouldn’t notice.” “Typical daddy issues. What a piece of work.” “I should have known . . . ” “Fucking sociopath. Dude, you’re lucky you got out when you...