...Adrian Matejka © 2014 Adrian Matejka 2014 Adrian Matejka Like Adrian Dantley I split any bit of sunlight in that land of sweaty tees & patriotic wristbands, escalating to the rim’s mezzanine like every player on that court did at the mall on weekends. Every bit of...

...Cate McLaughlin © 2012 by Virginia Tech 2012 Cate McLaughlin Ingredients for the Unmaking Her propensity to worry scabs, trust strangers, blush. 4 pounds of blood and a fistful of forget-me-nots dangling over the rim of a pill bottle. Earnest sympathy for...

... along the rim  /  but a groundswell of company  /  clambakes & fireworks made him unsteady  /  the undertow of agoraphobia / some days, i thought i would have dumb luck  /  tapping on the glass  /  inside the decibels ringing like jet engines  /  him becoming shell...

...Natasha Sajé © 2012 by Virginia Tech 2012 Natasha Sajé Happy and Sad come different ways through the brain —​ in one a feather is lofted on warm currents. In the other, lead talons drag you around a volcano’s rim. One’s a beach resort with...

... child rapist arrested down the road in Monument Park,   who twice a week sits nervous & cross-legged in wire-rim glasses, glancing up the hallway, down at his watch, tapping his feet until Vickie shows up, takes him back to the office to talk. He’d called it a ringing in the ears, the...

... sleeves, endless girls cupping manicured hands around their breasts. No one meets each other’s gaze. We drift to distant corners of the store, my friend fingering a Body Wand with purple rhinestones on its rim while I am lost, staring down the puckered surface of a fleshlight, analyzing strings of...

... reliable prop: even at its murkiest with grinds rimming the cup, it means enough to call up civility and unfurl a transient bridge across unlikes. Considering she has had so much taken away, I let her choose the place. We huddle in a cramped diner...

... minnesota review The archive of comparativist works from which historians and literary scholars now draw has extended dramatically. Along with Aztlan, the Pacific Rim, and the Afro-Caribbean, the emergent field of trans- Atlantic Studies has become the chief beneficiaries of the dismantling...

... firecracker. Gina says (plain old) orange. Sam licks the table where the Jell-O slopped over the edge. Gina looks horrified, runs to fetch paper tow- els, and wipes the rim and base of each bowl. October 02, free play, music area: Eliot wrests the tape recorder from Sam, punches the buttons, and says...

... would receive straws in his drinks at restaurants without asking for them, pull them out, and lay them by the side of the glass. He would gulp and leave grease on the rims as he would drink. “So the clown jumps on a unicycle and starts pedaling around the office carpet. The talent scout...

... When the wife opens the door and sees the look on my face, she gives me a long, satisfied stare. Eyeliner still rims the bottoms of her eyes. “You’re that poor dear with the lost cat, aren’t you?” She brushes her bangs out of her face. “Did you ever find her?” I peer inside her house...

... radio time for a big, fat, grumpy manager of a country western station, and what it was like to don an orange vest, sip whiskey, and wait for the leaves to rustle with the promise of an eight pointer. His eyes softened, his fingers tracing the rim of his margarita glass, his back shaking off...

... her hand. Looking at me through her wire-rimmed glasses, she would say something like: Ida, what do you think of Davenport, Iowa? It’s on the Mississippi. We were far from the Mississippi, in Allston, a working class neighborhood in Boston. A place like Davenport, Iowa, seemed like a...

... a rancher, wearing a powder-blue baseball cap from some construction company, and the white bristles of his beard cover more of his face than they should, creeping up over his cheeks and far down his neck, under the collar. I look at him with his red-rimmed, light-colored eyes and self...

... you want to wait. Mira brings the Ziploc bag out from its hiding spot in her bra, exposing for a nanosecond the stippled, outer rim of her are- ola, and in seeing her breast, you’re reminded she’s supposed to be a mother. All the air leaves you. How it’s all going to play out —​it’s right in...

... scoured clean in a hospital lavatory. She looked like Robin, for the most part. It wasn’t that she’d gotten the junkie surgeon who’d stitched my leg up with knitting needles when I was eleven. Close up, I could see a red line along her scalp, just in front of the hat rim, and...

... shining yellow —​four long, triangular teeth. Baggy black clothes resolved into a tangled growth of shaggy hair. It began to turn the rest of its body towards him, shuf- fling long-toed feet, raising a long-fingered, grey-skinned hand off of the rim of the green plastic. “Oh shit,” Paul said...