This Is Supposed to Be an Apology by Alyssa Kagel

  I stood at the threshold of my daughter Eliza’s studio apartment, staring at a nude statue with enormous breasts and a giraffe-like neck that held open the apartment door. I tried not to study the statue, turning instead towards my daughter’s side of the room: a painting on the wall with zigzagging gray lines that wasn’t Eliza’s style, dresser tidy as usual. But no Eliza.  Eliza’s roommate sat scribbling at a messy desk, her back to me, her side of the room filled with students who were bored or angry; I couldn’t tell which. Music blared. The whole place…

Thirteen by Tara A. Elliott

Plunging blade into white water,      my older cousin leaves girlhood  in the smooth wake     of creamless strokes.  Later, I creak the vanity     open, knock over bottles and jars      and hunt on Barbie-like tiptoes     for the can of Barbasol. I fill the bath with water so hot it turns bathroom     to cloud, perch along the lip of the tub—     my father’s razor heavy with the weight     of adolescent want. I will not ask anyone how—just     lather, drag the blade, and slice shin into a strip…

Shot Through the Heart by Aaron Cullers

  Aaron Cullers studied Writing for Film & Television at the Vancouver Film School and co-founded independent film team Pasquinade Films, which produced multiple feature-length and award-winning short films. Aaron’s screenwriting has been produced and screened at the New York International Independent Film Festival, Hondance, and others, while his stage work garnered a Best New Playwright award from the Fitton Center for the Creative Arts. One co-written film production, 7/11: The Hit Musical, had its global premiere listed by SPIN Magazine as a “Best Night Out.” He currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, two young children, and two…

The Big South by Leanne Phillips

I wanted to show my daughter something wild and free before it was too late. But I’m a shit mother, and that’s an inescapable fact. It’s in my bones, passed down in my family over hundreds of years, like other families pass down their sourdough starters.  Rae was remarkably quiet on the drive south from Santa Cruz. I’d expected her to be happy about missing school, but she seemed to feel inconvenienced more than anything. She kept letting out perturbed little sighs like an old woman.  “Do you know where we’re going, Rae?” I asked. I wanted her to talk,…

Birdish by Elizabeth Cohen

                 Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence I’ve been a bird since Tuesday. That’s the day Lucy usually comes over. She couldn’t make it this week and at first, I was glad. I didn’t want her to see me like this, even though it was all her idea. Now it’s Friday and I’m enjoying myself. The tickling sensation is almost gone and I’m luxuriating in my own softness. This afternoon I thought, the equivalent of feathers would have to be angora. I feel like I’m wearing the softest sweater, only in this case, I am…

Christmas at Dotty’s by Heather Campbell

The winter of 1989, it snowed on our yearly pilgrimage to Dotty’s. My grandmother, Dorothy, had asked me to call her Dotty years ago.  “I am too young to be a grandmother,” she said in her smoker’s drawl. “No one would believe you. You may as well call me Dotty so as not to confuse anyone.”   My mother and father begrudgingly made the trip despite the fact that Dotty despised my father for not being the rich man she wanted her daughter to marry. Our trips there were infrequent, but we always went on Christmas Eve. That was Dotty’s holiday,…