We, the School Dental Nurses, 1960 by Frankie McMillan We are the dental nurses, our cardigans tulip red, our feet rubber soled, we are the foot soldiers, we wave to the bomber jets as they unleash their arsenal of bright…
Tapeworm
Tapeworm by Kristen Loesch Listen in English: Listen in Mandarin: Mei knows she has tapeworms because she’s felt them squirming, slithering, shimmying in her belly since she swam here from Shenzhen, or maybe it’s just one long tapeworm longer than…
Artifacts
Artifacts by Veronica Montes The archaeologist, I’ve noticed, cycles through the same two hundred or so photographs and stories. Tonight she will post a beaded dress from the reign of King Khufu, but this afternoon she has shared the ivory…
cottonmouth
cottonmouth by Audra Kerr Brown ma dont sit with the baby no more not since pa caught her starin barebreasted at the lantern light found his boy beneath the feather tick pale and limp as a stillborn pig pa he…
The (almost entirely true) Story of Jessie and the Mountain
The (almost entirely true) Story of Jessie and the Mountain by Dreena Collins Jessie would not go. They told her that she had to move. The mountain, y mynydd, was sliding ever closer: inching and scuttling shingle and stone, until one…
November
November by Sarah Freligh Month of mold and radiators, month when girls are marched single file into the sneaker stink of the boys’ gym where we’re sized up and partnered off, even the holy roller girls who dance with each…
Beating the Herring
Beating the Herring by Marie Gethins Cross to shoulder, you bear the burden, sleeves covered in white fragments. A single herring remains. It trembles, glinting silver, then gold in the Easter Morning light. The river beckons. Earlier, a row of…
In The Arms of Khajuraho, 970 CE
In The Arms of Khajuraho, 970 CE by Tara Isabel Zambrano I am all stone, the monolith giving way to a slight slope below my navel. For a moment it seems as if a dark river has appeared between my…
In Whitby you may have the misfortune to be caught
In Whitby you may have the misfortune to be caught by Daphne Milne Dracula country, graveyard seeded with teeth and none of them sprouting. Alice and Bessie swinging on the cusp of the moon. Me watching Tat the Cat knitting…
Windows
Windows by Ranjabali Chaudhuri I love shop windows. Their colours, jewels, and mannequins sing the dulcet promise of possibility. They let me be anyone. Superimposed upon the clothes on display, my reflection can be a soldier in a red and…