...Elizabeth O'Brien © 2016 Elizabeth O'Brien 2016 Elizabeth O’Brien Thérèseon a Bench Seat, 1939 She sticks like a childhood memory or a scab sticks to me. She swizzles her legs, like straws with oscillating stripes, cherry red, she wants...

... of wanting a baby, but all I knew was that he abandoned us on that hilltop, forcing me to ride a school bus for the rst time in my life. at s how I ended up sitting in the bus s last seat, playing a game called pencil break with a boy named Travis Hinton. Travis was a tall, lanky kid whose mood...

... listen to Diana when she drove me to school in the mornings. She was slumped in the passenger seat, her mouth open, and I knew all the words to “Where Did Our Love Go,” while my brother drove fast through the countryside. You can sing louder than that, can’t you? He kept asking me in a funny way...

... on I-5 South and then another two on 199 West. I got in the driver’s seat, and Chris jumped in behind me. Chris was well into his gangster rap phase, and he had his headphones plugged in. He approached rap with the same systematic ferocity he applied to math- ematics. He was listening to every...

...Kirk Schlueter © 2016 Kirk Schlueter 2016 Kirk Schlueter Eschatology Autumn Saturdays, my father and I   chase trains out of town, burning down leaf-strewn roads alongside iron rails and clacking freight.   Eight years old, I huddle in the front seat...

... eyed and mouthless and fat as I ingested in the nom storm. I was a dead tongue making out with a dead tongue stilled at the moment of swallowing. I was seated upright until I fell into a sea of flab fornication. Cute flaps, I fell into their slimy velvet elements as if all of their material...

...Michael Deagler © 2016 Michael Deagler 2016 Michael Deagler Northern Liberties FROM DEATH When Boodle caught on that the driver was sleeping, he turned gin- gerly to the passengers in the back seat and, his finger resting verti- cally against his half-puckered lips, hissed to them...

... of estrangement. I have since found that only one of these prognoses is true. The next week we viewed drunk driving movies suitable for co-ed audiences. Robin sat two rows over and one seat up. The girl next to her (I could say Jane Celovsky for literary convenience...

... was in the passenger seat when one such driver, of the Church of the Nazarene and an exemplar of their well-known meekness, brought the car to a stop at the meeting of two so-called section roads. Being unsure of the proper way to proceed, the young man turned to the instructor for guidance. The student...

...-grandmother’s funeral. I remember sitting in a long line of cars riding slowly through traffic, being smushed in the back seat between two grieving family members; walking block after block in shoes too big for my feet. Only to walk into the church to see a dead person that didn’t look like...

... and a table that seated four. The only adornment was a daguerreotype of Adivina and her husband, Geovanni, taken on their wedding day. In stiff collar and dark jacket, Geovanni stood behind a seated Adivina. Their expression was solemn, but Adivina’s eyes had a luminosity enhanced by the silver...

... reading glasses on the bridge of his nose, he pulls the note out of his shirt pocket to make sure. Flight 445—Boston. “This is great,” he sighs. Listlessly, he peruses a magazine rack at a souvenir shop for a few minutes, then takes a seat in the terminal to wait...

... frosted with sun-faded paint and in need of a wash sits on his driveway. The horn yips as he unlocks. How far is it? I ask, taking the back after he s sat in the driver s seat, pulling his busted leg in with both hands. Twenty minutes north, he says. Road lines dart at us like tracer rounds. Whether...

....” McMahon 11 I’d heard that one before. We finally found Grandma halfway down to Lolo. She’d crossed to the wrong side of the road and crashed into a concrete divider. The good car was totaled. Grandma lay in the driver’s seat, leaning against the airbag. Once we got her out, I...

...Kevin González © 2006 the minnesota review 2006 Kevin Gonzalez Flat American Waltz These hard plastic seats are taking us into the black air. Let's all believe in the place where the black smoke of the bus assimilates, curling up, each strand...

... with the massive, seasoned- oak, hand-hewn timbers. Bents seated on a dry-stacked foundation, he remained square and plumb with his precision-fit braces long after the cancer and chemotherapy splintered, loosened, and weathered gray his rough-cut pine board...

... used to being in the front seat bite marks on the steering wheel why was she upset when her tampon is behind her ear she can’t find her pencil fired from her job why did the blonde fail call the welfare office jump off a bridge drive...

... as witching— the bucket and broom girl slips into the silence of your private chambers circles the four corners to banish and purify the remains of meals and baths where hairs stick to toilet seats skin flakes breed into dust...

... tried to cauterize it. They’re going on an adventure and the fish looks like a good place to start. Somewhere over the Grand Canyon she collects drippy teapots and mostly untouched desserts, tells the guy in 15C to stay in his seat...

...!! toast triangles square packets! of grape jelly!! see it all piled!! around me a booth seat! tear! in the red! cushion the window! with guests peering in! i m not!! eating! any of it just need to watch! index! nger! pointing! count every single! egg to make sure! none are missing! yellow chicken! souls...