She came to room 6303 first, ignoring the light, taking off her jacket then shirt followed by pants and socks. Each item snapped outward to remove even the hint of a wrinkle and folded flat in a neat pile on the only chair, a shabby affair with loose threads in striped maroon and mustard. She placed her scarf over the mirror. Like most hotels, the room gave off an abandoned men’s lounge vibe with red-toned woods and stark white bed linens that appeared...

Her eldest daughter Margot was dressed for high tea in a cotton dress and cardigan as if they were landed gentry. As if they were British. Her youngest daughter Bea did a little step squat forward past the sliding glass doors to unobtrusively wriggle free of the underwear lodged in her butt. Unsuccessful, she shoved her hand down past her ratty concert t-shirt into the back of her shorts. 


Clara took a step backward with every intention of returning to her room, leaving the too bright lights...

Given the request to volunteer their time or help pay for more staff to aid in carpool duty, the Parent-Teachers Association at Shaker Lane Elementary took it upon themselves to sponsor a fundraiser. They would raffle off a steak dinner at Finnegans Pub for a sun umbrella instead. The PTA President adorned the eight-foot blue-and-white-striped umbrella with a red ribbon and wheeled it out on its spindly pole to the carpool lane at the start of the week, handing it off to Principal Hill. They sho...

He tells us he is like that boss, you know, the one from the movie. “That’s all.” He’ll trill as he flutters past in a mockery of the boss, the movie, us. We can tell how a surgery went by the particular way he wears his white coat. On good days the coat is on, collar crisp, the sides flapping up and out as he strides forward, fast and sure. On bad ones, the coat is in his hand, tight and bunched, ready to throw at a chair as soon as he steps into his office.

Even if you went inside to escape it, the smell was still there on everyone’s mind and, even worse, their tongues—acrid and rotting—in their clothes, sweating out of their pores. The adults debated amongst themselves how to properly describe it as if this would make it dissipate. Moldy gym clothes, the crust that collects at the top of a gallon of milk, festering meat, and a decapitated decomposing mouse stuck in a trap were offered up as possibilities. Someone would always interject. Ruin the r...

If it had been anyone else, they might have said she needed Jesus. But the thing of it was Virginia Olivia Townson had had Jesus all these many years. And though the rest of her family moved seamlessly through the stages of grief in a series of coordinated efforts that sometimes felt contrived but worked nonetheless, Ginny, Mom, Aunt Virgie,

Beautiful Hunt explores the moment when you realize what is now never will be again no matter how hard you might try to go back. This work also explores developing selfhood – the tension between who we are, who we want to become, how we see
ourselves, and how others see us. How is our story told, and who gets...

The meal began with a journey. Over not one but two bridges, through a tunnel, just a little way past the Piggly Wiggly, and after precisely one u-turn, we would arrive at Louisiana Street. The Shrimp Lot itself was nothing more than twenty-odd open-faced ramshackle huts pressed tightly together on an uneven shell lot. If you happened upon it by accident, you might believe for but a moment you had stumbled into a depression-era shantytown...

I have apotemnophobia: the fear of losing a limb. I’ve had it longer than I can remember, and I can’t explain why. Maybe in a past life I lost a leg in a carriage accident or an arm in the grinding machinery of a textile factory.

When I was little, I was scared the monsters under my bed would gnaw off an arm if it hung from under my blanket. I hated to swim in oceans and lakes. In pools I floated in the shallow end, where I could keep a close eye on what was below.

On warm days my dad would drive with his arm out his window. I’d sit with my hands folded in my lap. What if a car passed by too close?

I always imagined the sudden, violent loss of a limb. It never occurred to me that it could happen slowly and