Issue 5: Memoirs
Watching for the Man by Tam Francis
I wake to a man crouching by my bed in the dark. His body hunches between the two twin mattresses, each bed pushed against opposite walls on the floor, futon style. I’d told myself the arrangement was groovy and cool, plus I didn’t have money for box springs and...
Teeth by M’shai Dash
It was the summer of 1999 in what was then called Chocolate City. It was a sweltering season curated by music that sprang forth from the backyards, churches and ghettos east of the Anacostia River. Go Go music. Drums for mating and drums for war. It vibrated around...
For Every Death by I. Grey
All profound love ends. Or so I’ve been told. As a child, I thought the most important thing in life was being happy, that one day I would find myself floating on waves of clarity with nothing but truth ahead. But the waves were stilled with doubt. Instead, I learned...
An Apology to His Mother by Jennifer Jussel
I can see you teaching him to walk. How his little feet stuttered How his fingers—unbelievably tiny— reached eagerly for yours, with your nails that shined like Christmas. Maybe it is Christmas. Maybe you’re taking pictures and laughing and beaming at him as he tears...
The Child Deep Inside by Thomas Young
I don’t know why I’m here today, it wasn’t in my plan, but here we are, just you and I, and I don’t understand. We haven’t talked in quite some time, I just can’t find the time, But I think about you often, you’ve been heavy on my mind. Everyone at home is well, the...
Snap Ankle Sandwiches by Eliza Stopps
There's a sound that takes me back to my childhood. I'll save you the guessing, it's not rolling, clapping thunder or tap-tap rain. It's snapping ankles, up the stairs, in the dark. Is that the walls or someone walking? I notice it everywhere I go. At school,...
Love Trap by Lotte Roy
What magic transpires when in the grip of the puppet-meister... What sucked me in? What pulled me tight? What trapped my mind, believing that this was right… An escape, my way out…how delicious it tasted, How susceptible was my spirit to the conundrum awaiting… The...
Sex in Utopia by Alicen Grey
1. The face of the desk lamp shined fierce light across my fingers as I typed the finishing touches on an assignment. It was a welcome warmth in an otherwise cold college dormitory. At 1AM I was still up, out of focus, trudging from sentence to sentence, more...
Too Literal (1986) by Melissa Thiringer
“Melissa, where’s your scrunchie?” Mom looked in both pockets of my jacket and on the floor under my booster seat. “I forgot it,” I whispered with a worried ruffle of my forehead. “Oh, that’s okay. We’ll see if your teacher has an extra one.” As I climbed out of the...
The Dreamer Awakened by Mary McBeth
The dream came again, and I knew what was happening even before I was awake. It was always the same; first the dream, and then the nightmare that was reality; the nimble creepy fingers exploring my inner thighs, and then searching my privates. As a well-trained...
A Reckoning by Michael Gorkin
She had no intention of going to town that day. The rundown colonial buildings, the beggars sprawled in the dusty main plaza, the streets with cobblestones crumbling like an old man’s teeth—the entire place made her feel even more uneasy than usual. But Geraldo...
Mine by Kelsey Anne Rankin
My skin has traveled. I’ve walked with her under the guidance of many hands and through the meadows of many sinking, breathing bodies. I learned her name there; how far she stretched and where we – her and I – began. I’ve been young and I have sprouted into my body. I...
Eviction Notice by Beverly James
“See me,” I whisper. “See me! See me!” I am startled by the screams that come from outside of my body, and I am surprised to find that my hands have balled up into fists at my side. “Do you see me?! Do you know who I am?! Do you remember me?! See me, Goddamnit! See...
Thief of Night by Eugenia Smith
Thief of Night BCE: In Greek mythology, night is a woman. Nyx, the powerful and voluptuous goddess of the night, is also mother to Hypnos (sleep), Thanatos (death), Charon (ferryman of the dead), Nemesis (retribution), Moros (doom), and Apate (deceit). These fearsome...
Inferno by Anne McMullen Peffer
The author wishes to note that this poem was inspired by Litany, by Mahogany L. Browne INFERNO Today I am a Mormon Woman in New England & I am singing pioneer trail songs like lullabies. They sound like: The mothers walked in thick and heavy skirts —...
That Thing with Teeth by Lexi A. Schwartz
The first morning after, you stripped his bed and took the sheets home. Where you had been folded in on yourself there was the shape of something—a dahlia, maybe—in dark red. He held a hand around your neck and pushed your face towards it. You called your mother to...
filler words Sophie Mindes
When he assaulted me, -- but that is the wrong word Assault is what they do in video games, when the men shoot a volley of arrows into the sea of the goblin army Assault rifle. No, it is not the right word But neither is rape. Not for this. Not for me. I cannot bear...
Water Softeners and a C- by Sarah Kersey
When I was 10, we lived in a neighborhood that was always under construction My parents installed an alarm just in case anything were to ever go awry They set up the defenses that should have been indestructible But there was this one day that I ended my walk from the...
To A Survivor by Michael Russell
V. To a Survivor It wasn’t your fault. You hold guilt like a snowball in bare hands, the cold permeates through flesh into bone—stiffens. You sit outside, numb winter with winter. There is a beast hibernating inside you. Describe him: the...
Artwork Abstraction by Darshita Jain
Stats say, one in every three girls will have experienced rape or sexual abuse in their lives I am one of three daughters. For most of my life, I have been told I am a work of art My body a work of art a canvas, stretched far apart, White. Clean. Pristine. My body is...
I Never Said No, Chapter from Memoir In Progress by Mary Beth O’Connor
Ah, relief! Done studying for finals, I headed out to commiserate with my friend. I threw on a gauzy white shirt with blue embroidered trim, Levi’s 501s, and earth shoes - remnants of my New Jersey wardrobe, but outdated for Los Angeles in 1981. I walked to the corner...
Things I Remember by Suvi Mahonen
The weirdness finally wears off when there’s only five minutes remaining. It takes the dregs of my limited self-control to stop myself from jumping off the nutter couch and pointing triumphantly at Laura and shouting ‘Ha!’ I don’t move. But my face must have. Because...
Protection by Starr Davis
(Ma ma) sleeps with a knife under her pillow (her dreams are (safer than mines) I grabbed a butter knife, put it inside my pillowcase dreamed a man climbed inside my window ...
The Ducks and the Vagrant by Melissa Lewis-Ackerman
I trembled at the altar in front of my future husband, Max, who wore a smart black tuxedo. His gentle, brown skinned, West Indian face was full of an authoritative joy. His kind, wide dark eyes were partly masked by thick framed glasses. He was broad shouldered and...
Mr. Director by Nicole Heneveld
When a highly respected British director tells me I am not feminine enough, I do not immediately understand. I wonder if this is an acting note or a personal insult, whether he was making a point as a director or as a man or both. The play is Women Beware...
Siren by A.L. Kander
Loud red, fire-engine red alarm on his arm screaming. Emergency dispatch, please send one of each: a cop, an ambulance, and a fire-truck. We might need everyone. Wet, smearing blood, thin like water, making doctors wonder. “Fish oil supplements,” he answers with...
Playhouse by Nikki Smith
One I listened to classical music from a young age. Not Bach or Debussy, but these deep, guttural religious symphonies like Joseph Haydn’s Die Schöpfung and Handel’s Messiah. My family did not practice any religion, but I was moved by that music. There was something...
Hollow by Danese Grandfield
once upon a time i watched and waited as mother sewed, her nimble fingers stitching the last now one, two, three stitches, and then she draped it, finished, lovingly around my shoulders, kissed me on the cheek, and pulled up the hood. “When you are in the woods,...
Cigarette Number Six: In Tile and Glass Cages by Doren Damico
this one makes me think of sex and then forget again being raped in a bathroom so it’s the cigarette i might want after great sex and it’s the cigarette i smoke to forget rape sex i still can’t scream i’m still trapped in tile and glass cages that’s when you...
Evaporated Life by Jackie Filer
I sit cross-legged on her couch, running my hands up and down the sides of my thighs like a small child who has been asked where the last cookie in the jar went. The dryness overtaking my throat is doing a grand job of silencing my tongue as I try desperately to...
Penance by Whitney Rio-Ross
Reflecting on cupped hands and tangled limbs, the mirror will show what you missed: Wrapped under your reach, my palms remain open, legs paired sleeping snakes. Forgive my mouth for making no sound. You never asked what I had to say. My name is...
