Baron Wormser: Five Easy Pieces
Bobby has the dis-ease that is bred in the easy-going yet overbearing ways of his nation.
Gary Fincke: Naming the Sky
…because my mother
Has died, wonder if he means to show me
Where she is, how one cluster has reformed
To suggest a melodrama of hope.
Keith Flynn: Granularities
Each organ seems like a streetlight in a neighborhood
viewed from the mountaintop at midnight,
going out slowly one by one. “It’s all downhill from
here, Son,” he tells me, “‘til I hit the bottom.”
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.
