Christine Fair: Triptych
If she had a girl, she wanted her to be pretty-popular-slender-cheerleader.
She got me.
She named me Carol.
Abby Zimet: Please Hurry, There’s A Lot of Dead Bodies. This Is Not Normal
Today in America, “The number one killer of children is guns.”
Gary Fincke: Anniversary
“Gary, just you wait,”
My mother promised me ten thousand times,
And I did until this moment, saying
That I’ve woken, love, to some happiness
Jessica Corbett: Report Details ‘Brutal Violence’ Endured by Lesbian, Bisexual, and Queer Women
The scale of brutal violence, legal discrimination, and sexualized harassment these communities face is rarely documented.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Blind Man’s Bluff
I dated a blind man in the 80s. Tall, slender, he was easy on the eyes. When I asked him what it was like not to see, he told me to imagine not breathing.
James Davis May: Hot Sex
she asks him,
resigned panic in her voice, Did you
slice one of those serranos into the guac?
David Hassler: Spaghetti Dinners
I pour Lynn a glass of wine and make a toast: “To our future life together.” We stare into each other’s eyes and smile. Unable to wait any longer, I ask Lynn if she will marry me. She says yes, and I begin to cry. I am here, in this place, with a beautiful woman who loves me.
Michael Simms: Daisy
After you died, I pulled a copy of Gatsby
From your shelf — torn, underlined, smudged
With marginalia — but still beautiful
In an unbound unglued sort of way.
Rebecca Gordon: Rain and Heat, Fire and Snow
Life in a Destabilized California
Barbara Crooker: Nearing Menopause, I Run Into Elvis At Shoprite,
The bass
line thumps and grinds, the honky tonk piano moves like an ivory
river, full of swampy delta blues.
Video: Animal Protein vs. Plant-Based Protein
Dr. Michael Greger discusses a public health case for modernizing the definition of protein quality.
Sally Bliumis-Dunn: Purple Carrot
These are lonely times.
No sweetness lingers on the tongue
from this carrot’s purple flesh.
Paul Christensen: The Ice Man Cometh
Vermont has gone into deep storage, buried under a foot of sticky snow, with drifts reaching up to a few feet in some places. The silence is as pure as a church on Saturday.
Sabine Oishi: When the US bombed Switzerland
Although Switzerland was not actively involved in WWII, it suffered a total of seventy bombings by Allied airplanes between 1940 and 1945.
