...Marcus Wicker © 2010 by Virginia Tech 2010 Marcus Wicker Maybe the Saddest Thing I can’t remember how to ride a bus right. Just the other day, I forgot who I was and couldn’t budge to help a human in need because the pen in my pocket was poking my thigh...

.... Did someone break in, do you think? asked Michelle. Just to leave a hat? Maybe it s a message of some kind? We should see if anything s been stolen. We decided that I would look in the living room and kitchen and Michelle would check the bedroom and bathroom. I m a pretty lousy looker I don t...

... “I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t like what he said.” “Maybe you were just sick of working.” “Maybe,” I says, kicking an oyster shell. “What’s your name?” she asks, slowing down. “Vinny.” “Of course it is,” she says. “What’s yours?” “Billy.” “Sure,” I says...

... think, that I am carrying Belle too. I’ve tried, but I have not been ready to put them down on paper. Writing this story is an admission of unresolved loss: she is gone, none of us know where she went. And maybe we didn’t try to stop her from leaving. Twenty years ago now, she jumped out...

...Sean Lovelace © 2013 Sean Lovelace 2013 Sean Lovelace 18 to 22 Me? I’m squared away. OK, maybe I drive slower. I drive slower. Sometimes I will confuse actual wheels and thoughts about wheels. I’ll think well, both take you places and I will smile into someone’s fore- head, like...

..., six months pregnant with our daughter, managed to find the words to tell him. The party arrangements were done, the cake safely stashed, we’d confirmed who would attend and even had a few bucks left over. That evening friends were playing in a band at a local bar. Maybe...

...John A. Nieves © 2015 John Nieves 2015 John A. Nieves Whirrs and Whorls (Tristitia) And, hey, the Polaroid was old anyway, a piece of junk really. When it bounced, I thought it was gonna come up roses, maybe snap a shot mid-arc, but no dice. All it could do...

.... No, he asked for no pickles or mustard no, no cheese it s just straight burger, bun, puddle of ketchup. The server is really humoring him. I wonder if he s like super rich or famous or something and I ve just never heard of him. It s like a cold soup at this point. Maybe I should suggest he cut up...

... with flour. We’d roll out the dough together, and he’d dab butter onto its surface, let me spread it like finger paint, before he spread globs of applesauce with the back of a spoon, then helped me wash the grease from my hands, and maybe he worried one day I’d be left...

... in potentially awkward situations, managed to maintain an air of aggression or arrogance or maybe even boredom—she couldn’t tell which—but whatever it was, people responded. Also, he’d discovered aftershave. “I liked being in Hindenburg,” Melody said, as in: hint-hint. The halls...

... the tracks to the railroad yard, around the low spots still wet from the flood. George watched as Oscar and Lucy exchanged a nod and a word in passing, Lucy giving him a wide berth. Judging by the pull of the burlap bag on his shoulder, Oscar was lugging maybe three or four small, dead things...

... it had in his car. His breath tasted strange when he spoke, which made me want to kiss him even less. Carla. Uh? Nothing. Mhm. We kept going until he stopped. I tried to keep going with his earlobes, but he pushed me away. He was old but strong. Or maybe I was just weak. I think you might...

... wondered if she would be the same cat, if somehow taking a piece of her wouldn’t change her completely. The day might come, I imagined, when the cancer would return and she would need to have another operation, maybe lose another part of her. Soon she would be nothing...

... —needs​ to hide —under​ frozen earth, wrapped in its thin tail. And then, tell me, what will you do? You will wander the brick streets looking for others’ secrets, for the quietest people, as though you could hide (and you cannot hide) inside them. Maybe the best way to protect you is to show...

... what your old lady said when you dragged in at 8:00AM leave us some mystery oh Fatso and maybe we can stand it, and maybe you can too and maybe the hot blast from the feeder’s fan will seem a dawn breeze, a cool ride with desire and not 3...

... Navy. Delaney stopped and inspected every other rock, picking them up, weighing them in her hands before discarding them. I tried to show her how to skip stones, but she liked the ones that were the size of her palm and made a decent splash. “Maybe we shouldn’t go too far out...

... the central line in your work, one would have to use the word dialectics. Your work takes up the project of the first great flowerings of the dialectic in the twentieth century —​the Frankfurt school —​and meets the challenge of elevating our deeply fragmentary times to thought. But maybe first you...

... and always smells extra sweet, like he maybe has a bunch of cotton candy in his pockets. Sometimes he’ll bring home a sack of little heart-shaped candies, the ones rich kids put in Valentine’s Day cards. But he has the crummy, messed up ones with mistakes in the lettering where the machine marked...

... three sons had learned it over the years, a psalm: One cartridge, one kill. The rest is just slop. In a voice chilly as springwater, Sull told him, “You work that bolt like an automatic, don’t you? Maybe they drafted the wrong one of you.” minnesota review 83 (2014) DOI 10.1215/00265667...

... and a black shape would break the mirage ahead. Cat. She d respond, already knowing. No way. It s too big to be a cat. It s a cat, trust me. Roo had a perfect record so far, ten for ten, everything from deer to bunnies. A pickup whipped by and honked twice. Maybe because of our legs, a flash of skin...