Category: Nonfiction

Megan Culhane Galbraith I sit alone at a cocktail party, drinking my gin and tonic and staring into the middle

Zain Khalid Dear guy, I get it. I’m Arab and, equally unfortunately, Arab-looking. I hadn’t shaved and was sweating a

I see centipedes, or I think I do, out of the corner of my eye when I’m in the basement I lately call home. I catch a shadow on the floor, and my eyes dart into every patch of darkness, every lifeless piece of clothing strewn about. While brushing my teeth, I am distracted by a nail hole in the wall. I am drawing with eyeliner and glance up and there—there. A live one. A couple inches long with flamboyant feelers barely distinguishable from its hair-thin legs. You could comb those legs. Curl those legs. Run your fingers down and through and caress those legs.

Tina Schweitzer’s* grandmother’s Boston Terrier’s testicles hang like bruised fruit under his tail. Tina calls them “balls,” but I won’t, can’t, don’t call them anything. We sit on the couch and watch TV.

Janet Frishberg This essay was inspired by Melissa Chandler’s fictional story “Considering They Lived,” which can be found here.  

In junior high we were always calling each other cocksucker or queer, dickhead or dumbfuck, standing in the locker room waiting for the showers, our thin chests stuck out, chins raised in challenge,

I don’t know who killed Laura Palmer. I don’t know who murdered her and then covered her with a clear plastic tarp and dumped her in the river. I could find out. That’d be easy enough.

A great deal of my childhood was focused on Scripture memorization. It’s the sword of the Spirit, after all! There was Sunday school on…well…Sunday and Awana on Wednesday—where we wore vests and sashes

Time Warner Cable Guy: Thank you for calling Time Warner Cable Technical Support, my name is Ralph, how can I help you?

Me: I’m trying to figure out why I can’t get the HD broadcast of the basketball game.