Creative
Nonfiction
June Contributors
Bright Aboagye, Pete Bertlessen, David Capps, Sara Caskey, Kristen Field, Natalie Marino, Gail Andromeda Vanhart, and Melody Wordworker
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 Liconln 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.
whiskey and fire
by A. L. Smith
“The library book says you need a candle, a personal item from your target, and the incantation— then, BAM! Hexed!”
the red-haired american
by L.F. Graubard
“Ronald Pelton. Pale, soft voice, face like the uncle who teaches you chess and guilt. Not dangerous at first glance, but glowing underneath.”
this is about nothing
by Uma Jagwani
“In the elevator, I look at my sweaty, meaningless face and feel disappointed. Not white! As if one day, I’ll step into this elevator and exit on the seventh floor as a part of the ruling class.”
an aching absence of song
by Alex Palmatier
“I wonder if you were put away for longer, things would have been different. Or if they gave you a guitar. What I would give to hear you play again.”
i could have saved my dog
by Katie Vinson
“I don’t have her, I could have had her, should have had her snatched, stealed, soughted police, priests, hitmen, even a hitman would’ve grabbed her, I left, walked in, walked out, I walked right fucking past her…”
oratory
by Ari Cordovero
“I thought of Saint Joseph’s hands — the way they were carved, cupped, as if holding something fragile he hadn’t asked for. My body was already doing the same.”
you help me feel less alone in this
by Nora L.S.
“Red solo cups and a single cigarette are passed around by people who, more sober than they’d like to be, seem to like the idea of partying more than this party itself.”
whiskey and words
by Sonali Kolhatkar
“My childhood memories of Dubai were marred by Baba’s whiskey and words. He liked his drink served in a cut crystal glass with exactly two cubes of ice, topped off with water. He would go through an entire bottle a week. By himself.”
the things she carried (and how much they weigh)
by Uma Jagwani
“My body has a shelf where all the memories of my dead aunt are stored.”
ode to ghost hunting
by Chel Campbell
“…it delivers us to our haunted spot, a campsite where, some forty years ago, teens were murdered by two brothers with shotguns. Point blank.”
when it rains
by Christie Goodman
“Blood sprayed from the wound in her head, like a fire hydrant, soaking my face and chest in deep, hot red.”
two essays
by Billie J Daniel
“My girlfriend thinks when I drink, I’m chasing a memory, a certain feeling from my childhood that doesn’t exist anymore.”
my dad wants me to listen to more pink floyd
by Audrey Hollenbaugh
“I used to have this idea in my head that healing from my past would mean I could suddenly do all the things I want to do and feel perfectly fine…I’ve realized that it isn’t quite like that.”
the brownsville code
by L.F. Graubard
“Months blurred. Death moved on little cat feet—alarms, gurgles, a gasp at 3 a.m. I pushed wheelchairs and watched bodies fail in slow motion.”
invisible
by Josh Price
“The dark becomes morning and I catch myself staring at the sun. I pull out my eyes, to keep them from burning.“
the bug
by Catherine Lutz
“Winter has had its way with the bush on which the berry hangs, denuding it of its leaves and stripping the fruit of any seeming life.”
the useless sig figs
by Andy Betz
“I am a band that does not exist. With no musical ability, I wrote songs for the singers never to sing. I am working to book performances that will never occu…a quartet of nothing named, ‘The Useless Sig Figs’”
the sun, the silence, and the fault
by Tony B. Cardiff
“I detest Meursault. At times, I was relieved he was fictional. An arrogant, socially irresponsible man. Yet, as I read, I felt a morbid curiosity…I drifted between repulsion and kinship. As if he were a mirror of who I once was.”
my tlön
by Mohammad Tolouei
“Borges has a story in which a group of encyclopedists gather to write an encyclopedia of a fictional world—complete with its mountains, its seas, and its systems of weight. Then, little by little, that fictional world begins to take shape and come into existence.”
monster theory (lyric essay)
by G. M. Rowbotham
“Gay bars smell like poppers and loneliness. I can’t go in. Not because I’m afraid of who’s there—but because I’m afraid I’ll stay.”