... and letting that tendril chart my liquor s joyride/ and not thinking that could ever be true/ but/ sometimes the words just hit like that/ sometimes my stupor sunbathes you back into existence like that/ if this room is an organ then, god, i am somewhere among the pipes/ whistling the truth into this solo-cup...

.... 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...

...Tracey Lien Copyright © 2019 Tracey Lien 2019 Tracey Lien Time Capsule No one in the girl s family ever says I love you because too much love invites bad luck. They don t kiss, they don t hug, and they don t hold hands unless the girl is crossing the road. So how do you know if they love...

... for 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...

... shop.” “No shit, Sherlock.” “Well you gotta have some shit to pawn or I can’t make you a loan.” “Who makes the rules?” she asks, leaning over the counter now, her eyes dark as mine. “My boss,” I says. But for sure this girl ain’t Italian. She’s pale as a ghost. “Don’t you ever...

.... There were thirty of us in the group, and some were the closest friends I have ever had. Now it’s just Jarret and me, and I’m no longer sure why I liked him in the first place. “Sometimes I want to start smoking just to be annoyed that you can’t smoke indoors,” he says. I nod. “I know exactly...

... fireflies and praying for a tornado to 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...

.... 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...

... 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...

...Matthew Litman Copyright © 2021 Matthew Litman 2021 Matthew Litman Diamonds from the Jersey Shore I lost my chapstick. It s been a habit of mine to carry it with me in my front jeans pocket ever since grade school. If I misplaced it even for a moment my lips would seem to dry out and I d...

... 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 is why...

... to go. minnesota review 95 (2020) DOI 10.1215/00265667-8623602 © 2020 Chelsey Grasso 32 Grasso 33 * Ever play MASH? Marnie and I shake our heads and follow my mother into her bedroom, where endless bottles of pills cover every surface, some con- tainers still sealed, others open and spilling onto her...

... the 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...

...: Priorities of the Professoriate . Princeton : Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching , 1990 . Burgan Mary . What Ever Happened to the Faculty: Drift and Decision in Higher Education . Baltimore : Johns Hopkins UP , 2006 . Golden Daniel . The Price of Admission: How...

... to exasperated as I could ever get with Pastor. My ear hurt from holding the phone against it with my shoulder. My hands, slick with mayonnaise, drummed at the kitchen table. I’d been mixing up a batch of tuna for sandwiches and the wooden spoon wasn’t getting it done fast enough so I started using my...

... sandwiches from foil drink coffee from flasks and we all watch the sun stoop low. A whole whale underground and a stoop to lift reach under it why never only ever do it when you really really need it through the whispered clouds what do we have? Only times of harsh clenching when this is not one...

...Keith Flynn © 2013 Keith Flynn 2013 Keith Flynn Louis and The Wolf I have come to wonder if Louis Armstrong and The Wolf ever met —​what a sight that, a grand summit meeting complete with growling, Wolf licking his harp and Satchmo grinning away, deftly...

..., the only mechanism by which knaben, buben, or icy batches of Robbie could ever thaw out to good old- fashioned blackness. The only other way, my Oma knows all about. But DuBois did not. That was no genetischen touch of the German tar brush on his Great Barrington Massachusetts face. Nein. Every Ger...

... that it has ever been easy. The ice, the fast, the walk —​these are the obvious things. You know all about this from the documentaries, hushed commentary rousing tender admiration for our species’ unparalleled will to live. Such tenacity, you might say while dabbing a hot eye, something to inspire us...