Winner “The Other Osama,” by Hassaan Mirza Second Place “Good New Teeth,” by Mark Doyle Finalists “Driftwood,” by Josie Tolin “Flame Jumps the Gap,” by Matthew Gordon “Inheritance,” by Kris Koval “Jacaranda Bones,” by Dale Trumbore “Last Days at the … Read More
By the Bridge or By the River? by Amy C. Roma (C&R Press, 2021). “Refugees didn’t just escape a place. They had to escape a thousand memories until they’d put enough time and distance between them and their … Read More
Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby (Penguin Books, 2022). When I was in high school, my friends and I plotted revenge. Some strange guy had groped one of us in the hallway and she was gutted. To … Read More
Dear Damage: Essays by Ashley Marie Farmer (Sarabande Books, 2022). Twenty-eight years ago this April, the musician Kurt Cobain jumped the fence at a Los Angeles recovery center, where he’d been an inpatient for just one day. He … Read More
He called it the new house, but it was very old. The landlord wouldn’t say exactly. He’d said it was built in 1920 or 1900 or, once, “the late 1800s.” William wasn’t sure if he was being cagey or … Read More
Today we mourn our great leader. A loss of great consequence: how hungry our stomachs, how boring our stories, how cold our campfires will be. No one knows when he arrived on this land. Some say he came when … Read More
Dolores, nearing the end of her second ambulance shift of the week, sits in a plastic lawn chair outside the back of the fire station. Between calls she often hangs around there, away from the television in the common … Read More
the labor nurse said, He’s got hair! while Todd looked between his fingers from across the room and I wiped the fluid glistening off Nicholas’s pink forehead, touched his shock of dark hair, like Todd’s, but his face was … Read More
oil on canvas Mira que si te quise, fué por el pelo, Ahora que estás pelona, ya no te quiero. Look, if I loved you, it was for your hair, Now that you’re bald, I don’t love you … Read More
mixed media on canvas [i didn’t know he had a sister is the wrong thought. nonetheless it comes to me. so does the husband, ferried by the double name. a crossroads. pleasant to think there’s room for two … Read More