By Daniel Sitts
It was a Saturday when the package came. Of course, my parents already knew it would arrive, and so found themselves sitting on my green leather couch, waiting.Everybody sat around the coffee table nibbling away the time. My father toyed with a carrot in his hand as though someone had dared him not [...]

By Nina Boutsikaris
I pump gas and watch what I think is a heron rise out of a flooded field across the salt-stained highway. Blades of grass poke up in all directions, brown and folded, collapsing over each other with resignation. Winter in these forgotten towns, Schooner and Lisle, Georgetown and Liberty, winter here is merciless [...]

By Mike Grippi
They lay intertwined, like the resting gears of an awful machine. His eyes studied her shoulder and side of her neck and her ear, tracing the lines of her muscles and tendons that connected them, each so soft and natural.He watched her skin, a light from outside the window outlining her edges with [...]

By Rhiannon Marino
A thin beam of car headlight slipped around the edge of the heavy curtain that stood in its way. It fell across the mound of blanket that lay beneath the windowsill, tracing the folds of woven fabric, searching for life. An eyelid fluttered open from deep beneath the shadows of pillows and downy [...]

By Bryant Francis
Imagine, for a moment, being surrounded by darkness. Imagine, briefly, that could see was the blackness, all you heard was a cacophonous buzzing comprised of the thousands of voices you heard day after day. The noises are all trying to tell you how to think, how to speak, how to vote, how to [...]

By Bryant Francis
I Love America
Let me tell you about America.
Let me tell you about the land
of the free.
It’s a land of happiness and
apple pies, of bright spring mornings and the Friday
night football game.
It’s the home of capitalism, the
symbol of
freedom.
A flag on every house, a job for
every man
Children laughing, playing in
the streets
The high-school hero gets the
blushing [...]

By Karen D’Apice
I carried her in, thinking “this is the last time.” Her fur was old; now it always clumped between my fingers and stuck to the skin on my hands. I wrapped one arm around her chest and the other underneath her tail. It was the only way I knew how to carry a [...]