Creative
Nonfiction
August Contributors
Anne Dougherty, Clayton Eccard, Erik Fuhrer, Brandi George, Caroline Huckeba, Sam Moe, Michela Polito, Mugdhaa Ranade, Travis Turner, Chachee Valentine, and Bridget Verhaaren
gay is a word for an afterthought
by Bright Aboagye
“As I write now, I recognize how often my life has been induced by recriminations that never occurred out loud. I anticipated them so thoroughly that they became unnecessary. I corrected myself in advance. I punished myself privately. I offered compliance as proof of gratitude.”
weekends at grandpa's
by Peter Bertlessen
“In perilous times such as these, I'm reminded of one of my Grandpa Jim's favorite sayings: nothing in life is guaranteed except death, taxes, and fascist regimes burning their country to the ground.”
deconstruction
by David Capps
“When a companion star dies it gives its partner all of its remaining matter, its body, not a mouthful of ashes, its sustenance, for the twins that shared an orbit will be come one, burning bright blue, for the rest of life.”
growing/dying
by Summer Griffin
“The flowers died on Monday. I chose yellow daisies because they remind me of little suns, and I’ve never trusted the real one to stay.”
seals
by Rachel Lincoln 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.”
honey, spice, and spirit
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.”
my star
by Amanda Parrack
“‘I’m frustrated because there are no words to describe what I feel for you, how much I love you...’ and then [she] hands me the rose I would dry on my apartment wall.”
family reunion
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.”
i should have known
by A. L. Smith
“I should have realized something was wrong when I saw the rag stuffed into the floor vent and heard her lingering on the other side of the door, barring my escape.”
second skin
by Shena Cavallo
“I had always imagined divorce was something that happened when you are betrayed, when you fight and scream and treat each other poorly..There is sometimes no terrible event, no great betrayal or revelation, but an itch that never ceases to irritate you.”
our last goodnight
by Honor Teoudoussia
“Now, she is tired of his attention. And his crises, and his ADHD, and his PTSD, and his weed smoking. Tired of all the attention on him.”
the jockey
by Monique Quintana
“The rose garden is dead but not dying. I prop my phone on steps and pillars to take thirst-trap pictures I can pepper my Instagram feed with. In one picture, I am lounging on a rock path, and it looks like I am giving birth to one straggling rose.”
encounters
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.”
octoberish
by David Capps
“The kept world dies. The world kept lives. The virtuous grow more virtuous. The weary grow more weary.”
dear ivan pavlov,
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.”
i only came in my dreams
by Kristy Money
“I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was 40. This was by design: In my adolescence and early adulthood, being able to hold myself back from orgasm was my ‘superpower.’”
hello stranger
by Molly Higgins
“‘I host S&M and sex parties in this apartment. Big community for it here in LA.”…“I bet.” I said, hoping I looked natural and cool, nonchalant, like someone who was more than at-home in a sex dungeon.”
sumo
by Scott Bethay
“Other hallway chats with [Mr. D] concerned my procrastination, my lackadaisical nature, his not infrequent dirty jokes, and his admonishment to “be careful” because the other teachers thought I was ‘thinking about sex all the time.’"
the monster wasn’t a mannequin
by Swapan Samanta
“The best horror shows us we've been the monster all along.”
three micro/flash
by Maxim Volk
“The pastor begins his weekly exegesis, and before he reaches the first mandate from the Most High, my teenage mind has slipped away, floating over the congregation of parishioners, each there for a service that I care little about.”