1.
My father died on Christmas Eve, 1986. I was three years old. When my mother broke the news, I responded in a startling way. "Death is just a figure of speech," I told her. Of course, at age

Months ago. Here it is me at the grocery getting flowers and deli meats and here’s the little boy with his face soft and fluffy and pink. 

Roxane Gay took me out to dinner five years ago. It was Roxane, Ashley C. Ford and me. We were in Indianapolis and it was the first time I'd met either of them. I remember thinking wow this is one

Before Nathan underwent surgery he made a list for if he survived, though it wasn’t that severe or threatening a procedure.

Digital Hellos

An erroneous message of two equals,
in a future program.

The Internet was given an italicized quote
above a colored text box,
he may have wanted to kill me.

This

He was at the window. I heard the tap-tap-tap.

After, we slunk back to Mema’s Alaskan Taco Hut and I crawled into a booth and ordered with two fingers like we were stuck in a Mad Men b-reel. I couldn’t see my hand held up, but from this

I am trying to come out to my father / but all he wants to talk about / are the 1985 Chicago Bears

“I don’t like how her flesh looks,” my daughter tells me. According to Phoebe, this woman has the flesh of a winter peach.

Before roosting in the city, starlings dive—
five thousand deep in flock. Like cells they follow the
law of localization. Bound by surroundings. Step into a

crowded elevator and take on

BROWSING FOR CHAINSAWS

The carwash that neighbors
the boarded-up hospital
suddenly leaks back to life.
A rust-eaten truck rumbles by,

a keg of insecticide banging
around in the

“We made out once,” my sister says. I thought “I was in love with him for a night.”

All i want is an apple but no one / is picking these days.

My daughter Lisbeth checks Missy’s gums for bleeders. “Sometimes the damage done takes generations to make itself known,” she says, nodding along with her words, agreeing with herself. 

By now Lena was supposed to be the version of herself at whom people looked twice, and whom Alec missed, at home, now that they lived together. But she was still just herself, in stockings and hoodie, her face half-done. 

Domo

and a vague behind-the-eyes tired from reading about destruction until after midnight

At first Margaret went around whispering about the rape. The rape? Her rape? Did she own it? Did she have to keep it? Did she share it? 

Don’t know whether I was really desperate for weed or just plain curious about that dude, Duffy, but for whatever reason, I found myself back at his trailer, on the couch, watching TV and smoking his shit.

[The wind of that dream lasted a horizon]

The wind of that dream lasted a horizon
of years in my stomach, leaving a lone tree

bent in the gesture of listening. That’s why
my hand

We wiped down, scraped, rearranged, shook out, swept, mopped, vacuumed, stripped, waxed, sealed.

Welcome to Hobart Photo Stories, a one stop shop for photos that will excite the brain, the eye and the heart.

—Tara Wray, photo editor 

Julie Hrudova works and lives in

Molly liked that the Museum of Light was honest.  Inside every light is a seed of darkness, one interpretive sign began.  It is light’s job to prevent that seed from blooming.  

Southerners think that West Virginia is the north, and northerners think West Virginia is the south. 

If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.

No one should become a new parent at my age.