...Daniel Lassell © 2021 Daniel Lassell 2021 Daniel Lassell Mom Woke to a Coyote Staring in Her Window And now I hear the pack, wayward, yipping along the fences, the llamas pastures. I hurl myself with my siblings down a long string of gravel into darkness without a weapon, only our yelling...

... was eighteen and my mom was in her late thirties. She had gotten preg- nant in college, my father a philosophy professor who had a wife and family and wanted to have nothing to do with me. She certainly had a type. Before Jim, there had been a long line of shiftless boyfriends who shacked up with my mom...

... just turned sixteen yesterday. My mom kept promising a party whose sworn luxuries grew less impressive as the days went by, the concert venue shrinking into a dinner at Rocco s for ten, five, three, two; the new iPhone devolving into money, a day trip to the beach, nothing at all. Her need for my favor...

... of them came from. Bev’s a head taller than I am, like most of the girls in our grade, and she hits hard, but I don’t admit this or complain about her sharp knuckle punches because I’m the one getting the better bruises, after all. Bev’s mom is sitting in her broken car, on the street, smoking...

...Cole Depuy cole.depuy@gmail.com Copyright © 2022 Cole Depuy 2022 Cole Depuy Boys Hominoid carnivores don t eat meat > they eat movement > the rest of us eat > color > our Mom spoons us mushed carrots > we revert to prelinguistic hunger > dsprtly tryng to scrp the air frm our stmchs...

... an hour, things break right, he said. Telemarketing, Mom said, and stormed from the kitchen. His next job was at a rental car company, driving cars between branches. On the seventh day, they smelled his breath. He cleaned bathrooms at the lake while one of the maintenance guys had the flu. A stint...

... hair, he ignited the amazon, and from there he plucked california and australia, he took the hairs, leaving only the follicle. and i admit i cried when i saw the world was on fire. burning is a paralysis too familiar to my skin. at that time, mom asked me if i had talked to my brother since christmas...

... being a single mom is. Plus, you love her. Pulling Mira close now, you kiss the top of her skull, and then you throw open the kitchen windows and go outside with her onto the front porch for some air, giving the aerosol stench time to clear. Your apartment —​an old single-family home...

...Corey Ginsberg © 2017 Corey Ginsberg 2017 Corey Ginsberg When Tuna Helper Needs Help Call Mom and Dad. Tell them you’ve blown through your inheritance and are turning side-dish tricks to make rent. Mom and Dad are sturdy Stouffer’s entrees. They came intact...

.... “Well, that game looks interesting! A whole world of fairies and princes  “No, Mom. Over here.” Mom was now two syllables that dropped from a great height. I drew up close to Tommy, packages already in his hands. So urgent, bangs swamping his brow. Don’t touch his hair. He hates...

... though you ve never taken it out, you imagine it smells like the antique store your mom sometimes drags you to. You spend a lot of time staring at this map its beige continents, names scrawled in ink that spill out into the seas, a menagerie of hand-drawn belugas and orcas and baleens. Fingers hovering...

... anymore, mom said when I was careless. I dented her dining table, bled through my sheets every month. I care too much how I inhabit the world. She pets my hair. What would mom say now? What is better left unsaid? I hear the caution alarm of a truck backing away. It s almost our stop. Lifting my head, I...

...Michelle M. Tokarczyk © 2006 the minnesota review 2006 38 the minnesota review Michelle M. Tokarczyk Step Stool Skimping on grocery money, or even the church’s weekly basket, each year Mom tried to rummage me a birthday. I hope she...

.... that winter when you came to introduce your fiancé only to realize you interrupted one of mom and dad’s fights. thank you. she had been threatening to jump. we never found out if second stories guarantee safe landings. sitting in the van, watching uncle mutter to himself outside...

... shin with black rust and the lawsuit. Gorilla Man says Adam’s mom is a meth head. Before making me gather the stones from her garden. I hit all of his golf balls out into the pasture. I thought I had found them when the miniature horse. Beau died intestines snaked from his asshole Gorilla Man says...

..., mom calling Cameron! Cameron! to get you to look, then said kick, kick! Remember, there’s nothing a mother won’t do for one still shot of your head above the water. It’s important to always practice good form: kick your legs. Remember Tortola, the sea like melted marbles...

... finished up chemo nine months ago (for the Ewing’s sarcoma in my pelvis bone), Dr. Jerome asked me if I’d like to meet Ryles  11 him without my parents at my quarterly follow-up checkups, and I said yes. My mom and dad resisted at first but ultimately...

.... Teachers left me alone after that, and then the school year was over. Life was supposed to become useless and unproductive. Free- dom, my father called it, a chance to try new things. I watched him flip flapjacks at the kitchen counter with a batter-caked spatula, wear- ing Mom’s old apron. I wanted...

... the shard of glass had cut. On a nice night like this, he knows, Mom and The Pricks will be sitting on the back porch, no one inside that can see him out front, so he takes out his pack of Virginia Slims and lights one with a match. The pack of matches has the Dickens insignia on the front...

... that she might run into Helen out here, on her way home from wherever she’d been. Where you been? she would ask her. Oh, you know —​just around, Helen would say. You worried Mom and Dad real bad, she’d say. Well, everything’s okay now, Helen would say and maybe wrap her arm around her neck...