by Laurie Blauner

photo by Tony Wallin-Sato

As a teenager I was exuberantly ashamed of my crooked teeth, although they weren’t my only problem. If I did smile, I covered my teeth with my palm. So my usual facial expression was comprised of rococo motifs that formed an impression of seriousness and concentration. This was fixed with braces and a horrible contraption called an “orthodontic headgear” that consisted of metal rods, one that circled the outside of my mouth and one inside that was connected to my braces, plus a strap around the back of my neck that forcibly moved my teeth with its cinching.

by Meredith Jelbart

This cabinet, which I gift to you, my child, has ten rows of ten small drawers. Standing flat against the wall, it takes up little space. It is beautifully crafted; dark wood of the drawer front meets the lighter interior wood in dove-tailed joinery, a dark tail interlocked with a lighter one, a darker, then a lighter and so on.

It has come down in our family, from a great-uncle’s garage, to my study. To wherever you may choose to keep it.

You could say it’s an heirloom.

by B. Luke Wilson

mezzotint by M. Rapine, curtesy of The Public Domain Review

Heat That Smells Like Drowning 

I drew a perfect tesseract on my son’s old Etch-A-Sketch seconds before the bomb fell. Nobody ever saw it, or how beautiful the shape was. The tremors began light as the air under the muscles of a dancer—and grew until their shaking dissolved my perfect symmetry into the toy’s memoryless sands. Everything flashed to red, and the heat smelled like drowning.

My wife Sarah was a master locksmith.

art: "Spirits Can Feel You" by Katie Frank

by Irina Varina

When you are feeling joy, don’t forget to breathe.
I breathe and I circulate. It flows through my entire body. Full body orgasm.
“At any point I can choose to be a part of any story,” I write.

Oh. A friend had just brought me a refreshing drink. And I chose to switch from the story of me thinking him thinking:“Why doesn’t she stop writing, she is so not interesting and boring compared to other friends on this medicine journey.” to: “She is so beautiful in doing what she has chosen to do.

photo by Tony Wallin-Sato

by Cole Swensen

Sunlight

is audible when it strikes on a slant, its chant determined by a number of factors, for instance, its rhythm is determined by the time of day, its pitch, by the time of year, and as for tone, it’s the weather—say a cloud bank breaks up too quickly, and there’s the sun, suddenly undone by its own light.

Or sunlight is substance poured out on, is a saint strolling unbound; the sun dissolves everything it rolls across, though it sometimes takes millennia—mountains,