Creative
Nonfiction
May Contributors
Erica Anderson, Shena Cavallo, David Capps, Summer Griffin, Amanda Parrack, Nicholas Schmidt, A.L. Smith, Monique Quintana, Phaedra Saffron, Rachel Sarnoff, Honor Teoudoussia, and Ellen White
May Highlights
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dear ivan pavlov,
CNF by Erica Anderson
“That little sh*t stop patch of land is permanently burned into my brain. Like Pavlov’s dogs, the sight alone makes my body remember unloading brunch onto very expensive dirt.”
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encounters
Micro CNF by Nicholas Schmidt
“We saw them from across the plain. We were up on a hill, green grass tufted around our ankles, walking a ridge. A big ole mama bear and her cub.”
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family reunion
Micro CNF by Ellen White
“My cousin and I have been looking for Bridget Reynold’s grave for twenty years. Lots of Reynolds. Just one Cornelius. On the headstone: Bridget, his Wife cut sharp beneath the date of death.”
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honey, spice, and spirit
CNF by Phaedra Saffron
“This drink is honey, spice, and spirit…I shall drink it in your honor, your ever-loving memory. Serenaded by her speeding cars, her homeless men playing all manner of instruments for spare change.”
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seals
Micro CNF by Rachel Sarnoff
“One day waves will break through the walls, rush up and over the prom, crash through the glass, and carry the seals back to the ocean. They will float on their backs and bark and clap, toss their balls into the air like confetti, celebrate the win of which their ancestors could only dream.
i really wish that i knew about midwest emo music back when it was cool to be sad about girls and sneak drinks from the liquor cabinet
by Jack Etzler
“So, like, fuck man, if I knew about this Midwest Emo shit back in college I feel like I would’ve hit new levels of emotional depth…”
case review
by Kathryn Reese
“My ex beside me, blocking my view of my daughter. My daughter, the sort of fighter who hides behind her hair.”
photo of grandpa, or kingdom of mud
by Aaron Tomey
“He lived in a shed in my grandparents’ backyard, hidden from a world that had trouble looking into his one remaining eye, surrounded by “walls… covered from floor to ceiling with pictures of adult pornography”
fisherman
by Zary Fekete
“We stood by the river. The fishing line in his hand like a quiet reward. Behind us, Váci Street shimmered with glass storefronts and clean white signage. Leather handbags, crystal shops, wine bars with English menus. The river didn’t care. It flowed between both lives, unbothered.”
gentian
by Basil Rosa
“It drove me to realize there is no single moment when we happen.”
hurricane tee tee
by JD Clapp
“Wait…You gave your friend a hundred bucks to give Pops a hand job? In Chris’s car?”
miami’s forgotten nature
by Anthony David Vernon
“Ghost trees, gators, and green grasses act as hosts to a wide river. The Everglades is an exit, a slow race to the sea, the type of host that invites you to leave.”
the well driller
by Michael Templeton
“Blanchot tells us that “(f)orgetting causes language to rise up in its entirety by gathering around the forgotten word” (The Infinite Conversation, 194).”
i refuse to become an ai smartphone zombie
by Ron Whitehead
“here is a struggle going on for our minds. Every form of expression is being attacked. The attack is overt and subtle. The attack manifests as mind manipulation. The attack is pervasive.”
words unwinged
by David Henson
“The heaps and our dismay grow. Resigned, we build bonfires and sweep in the words. As they ascend with the smoke, we wonder if we'll ever know their beauty again.”
my father’s country
by Johanna Nauraine
“What else might I expect from a man whose ancient language is ‘a means of communication and dialogue by the Hindu Celestial Gods.’”
“chimera”: a poem & study (from the poetic memoir autocartographies)
by Eva Alter
“The poem’s central metaphor invokes the mythic Chimera—a creature composed of disparate animal parts—as an embodiment of fractured identity.”
aloft somewhere beyond comprehension
by Basil Rosa
“The payments on accrued interest alone for each of the creditors I owe money to will keep me pumping cream into doughnuts in this kitchen for up to fifty hours a week until I’m a corpse.”
field trips
by Marcia E. Williams
“The sun's orb, brilliant orange from smoke particles in the air, dipped below the western horizon as lenticular clouds morphed from warm pink to flat gray.”
going mobile
by Leah Mueller
“My best friend Ezra, a huge fan, was flat broke and lived on my couch in Madison. He never offered much monetary help, but he was good in bed.”
it all began, begins with words
by Emma Wilkins
“We can’t begin, or can at best only begin to understand, this place—its origins, and ours. And we begin, time and time again, with words.”
leaving (dejando)
by Casey Jo Graham Welmers
“The twin towers still punctuated the skyline in New York City, and I could have easily boarded the plane with a chunky shoe full of prison shanks were I so inclined.”
little detectives: a reflection
by Adrian Kresnak
“There’s a children’s museum that used to have a severed head in a freezer.”
as i grow old, i remember
by JB Polk
“…I believe that life, whether one is young or old, must be lived and commemorated as it comes.”