Tony Gloeggler: Hardly Talking
I’ll give up and lie,
promise, that yes, his friend
will be back tomorrow.
Baron Wormser: On Moral Grounds
One can be humbled into silence and one can be humbled into words. Or one can feel both—the silence that underlies the words.
James Crews: I Keep the Window Open
Life’s too fragile
to waste on money or importance,
handing over the hours that will never
be returned to us.
Video: Homesick
An absurdist thriller about an unhappy man who attends a retreat offering adults a second chance at a happy childhood.
Gary Fincke: Headcheese, Liverwurst, a List of Loaves
Our refrigerator
Opened to liverwurst,
Headcheese, a list of loaves:
Luncheon and Luxury
Video: Safe
On a winter night in Atlantic City, the manager of a defunct casino must reckon with his parental failures when his unruly son needs help out of an illicit bind.
Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum: Heaven-Fire
The boy is not my blood
Though “Son” is the only name I have for “He-
Who-Will-Dance-To-Just-About-Anything,”
Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum: The Toddler
Almost anything will break
The toddler’s heart: His mommy’s keys
Singing from the bowl of loose ends
And change on her way out the door
For work.
Tony Gloeggler: Working Class Heroes
My father opened the trunk,
tossed me my glove with a worn
hardball tucked in its pocket, eased
into a catcher’s crouch as I paced
60 feet away.
Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum: A Good Man
To this day, my sister and I wonder if Dad
Got it right. “Fear,” he explained years later,
“Is sometimes the only tool.”
Edward Harkness: My Father Meets Margaret Bourke-White 
He finds a Hershey bar
in his breast pocket, offers her a piece.
She flicks her cigarette into the dark,
takes the chocolate and says, Thanks, kiddo.
Carol Frost: Now Soon
Father and mother time to rise up put away the dark
give back to him more than he can ever use give what is
not his to have what he never knew he knows and all he feels
Jim Daniels: My Security Question
The closet in her room
remains as she left it
clothes losing their dark
interest. Ghosts in the dust.
Video: Bruiser
After his father gets into a fight at a bowling alley, Darious begins to investigate the limitations of his own manhood.
