... every fever you ever faked or the hiss of hydrogen peroxide on a dog bite. Hamburger loaves, a lab technician digging for a vein. The little box on the dresser, the one crowded with kernels of milk teeth —​their dark centers. Hereditary terror of crows...

.... Nothing is more fragile than the head of a squirrel too slow to move when the car approaches & afterward too slow to ever move again. There’s a lesson in everything. Last night, I dreamed we walked by the river & it was still frozen, ice-jammed. What could move...

... descend like a witch's hat and swallow a hole she used to call a heart. Because nothing can be whole ever again, and nothing can be pure enough or evil enough to feed the hunger of her hate, because her people die before they even breathe, because the starved and lost of this...

... Kingman like every one except for Pernell Cole Pernell Cole Lonnie hates he the big exception that job ass fucker Pernell him now the captain driver him the shitbird bring the mail ever day from company and Lonnie Kingman favorite magazine...

...Kimiko Hahn © 2012 by Virginia Tech 2012 Kimiko Hahn The Solitary Adélie She peers into reticent waters near Hut Point and if you’ve ever arranged an internet date at a designated window in the Central Park Zoo you know what she wants. If you’ve taken your little...

... ago. Felicity Frisbie Bureaucracy Did you ever think about the people who make the city go? About the guy who had to change all the subway maps after the twin towers blew? Or the guys who have to make the signs...

... sudden, cold-sweat feeling that my grandparents, in my absence, needed my company: my grandfather on the porch tuning his fiddle, or my grandmother folding back my comforter, all set to tuck me in. But could I ever reach them, could I ever burst into our house in time? Let me tell you: the...

.... So many costumes. It was a good show. I can testify he is as man as ever if you measure by skin and science and even if you measure by football and hamburgers. I am as girl as ever if you measure by blood and curves and the chemicals in my closet. None of it...

... smell of bleach is persuasive, but a lie. Nothing ever comes completely clean. That’s what binds us: recognizing in each other the dirt, so we’ll keep trying to scrub out our own. minnesota review 88 (2017) DOI 10.1215/00265667-3786863  © 2017 Liz Robbins...

... few hours ago. Felicity Frisbie Bureaucracy Did you ever think about the people who make the city go? About the guy who had to change all the subway maps after the twin towers blew? Or the guys who have to make the...

..., they resembled every key to every house I’ve lived in ever since, and everything we knew about love: ghostly and forbidden. minnesota review 79 (2012) DOI 10.1215/00265667-1708241  © 2012 Austen Rosenfeld 23 ...

... moment in time as a regret, and what have I ever done that was so bad? I regret getting the little retarded boy sent away to a neighboring school, simply because he gave us unwanted bear hugs and we didn’t want his stench to rub off on us. So we hatched a plan in our...

...Jason Bredle © 2013 Jason Bredle 2013 Jason Bredle Dodger Stadium Sometimes I pose in front of the mirror with weapons and practice making threatening remarks. It seems like something always comes before everything but nothing ever leads to...

..., hoodoo spirits spray each weed and skeeter, shoot what moves if it flies it dies, if it lives it cries until we rest in peace for Resurrection sealed in vaults where this world can’t ever reach us Jesus walks in gold, gold gathers and blesses its circle of hands while we...

... impossible to turn a wolf into a dog. Look in a mirror. Repeat after me if you want to understand, like, what it’s like: gotta love a horse gotta love a horse gotta love a horse! . . . and so forth. I’m going to tell you every single thing that’s ever happened to me...

... mean. We’d spent weeks traveling across the sea without ever seeing the sun is another way of putting it. It’s like the deeper you get into it, the less you want to know about it. But I couldn’t help myself. A whale had washed up in our backyard, and though I...

... more and the next day you’ll for- get him a little more. All in service to the larger vanishing. Let me put it like this. Have you ever had a bad acid trip? The kind where you spend eight hours crying in a bathroom, thinking of everything out- side your heart that is not your heart of which you...

...Emily O'Neill Emily O’Neill a story so touching it must be told with a whip how can you go home when your mother calls you James & everyone else knows you’re Candy do you ever get tired of changing clothes & beating your face in doorways can’t pay for anything can’t afford opening your eyes...

.... Sold his sister a garden-size plot, kept himself a tract and a trailer. This is the way we live now. Short rides we manage day to day. Dreams wide as the town limit. The sky still hangs big as ever We just don’t watch it so much. ...