Andrew Hemmert
Accidental Prayer

Andrew Hemmert - Accidental Prayer

Poetry
Andrew Hemmert is a sixth-generation Floridian living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Bat City Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Mid-American Review, North… Read more »
John Sibley Williams
Birds of Prey

John Sibley Williams - Birds of Prey

Poetry
John Sibley Williams is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Disinheritance, and Controlled… Read more »
Robert Hahn
Called Back

Robert Hahn - Called Back

Poetry
Robert Hahn is a poet, translator, and essayist. The poem in this issue, “Called Back,” is from his new manuscript, a narrative sequence of poems entitled Afterlife. Five books of his poetry have… Read more »
Gisèle Lewis
Driving with Refugees

Gisèle Lewis - Driving with Refugees

Fiction
Gisèle Lewis is a native Bostonian transplanted to sweltering Florida. When not ferrying her children to extracurricular activities, she spends every free moment writing or reading. Her secondary… Read more »
Analía Villagra
Implantation

Analía Villagra - Implantation

Fiction
Analía Villagra's stories have appeared in Raleigh Review, The Briar Cliff Review, Water~Stone Review, and New Ohio Review, where she won the 2018 fiction contest judged by Mary Gaitskill. She posts… Read more »
Rick Mulkey
Mingo County Men

Rick Mulkey - Mingo County Men

Poetry
Rick Mulkey is the author of five books and chapbooks, including Ravenous: New & Selected Poems, Toward Any Darkness, Bluefield Breakdown, and Before the Age of Reason. Previous and current work… Read more »
Angela Voras-Hills
On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Angela Voras-Hills - On Earth as It Is in Heaven

Poetry
Angela Voras-Hills lives with her family in Milwaukee, WI. Her first book, Louder Birds (Pleiades 2020), was chosen by Traci Brimhall for the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize. Other poems have… Read more »
Courtney Craggett
Ordinary

Courtney Craggett - Ordinary

Fiction
Courtney Craggett is the author of Tornado Season (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). Her short stories appear in The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Washington Square Review, CutBank, and Booth, among others.… Read more »
Marc Alan Di Martino
Runaway

Marc Alan Di Martino - Runaway

Poetry
Marc Alan Di Martino grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Rattle, The New Yorker, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse-Virtual, Palette Poetry, and… Read more »
Brian Koukol
Serotiny

Brian Koukol - Serotiny

Fiction
Brian Koukol, raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, now makes his home among the salt breezes and open spaces of California's Central Coast. A lifelong battle with muscular dystrophy has informed the… Read more »
Gabriela Denise Frank
Tending Generations

Gabriela Denise Frank - Tending Generations

Creative Nonfiction
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Gabriela Denise Frank is the author of CivitaVeritas: An Italian Fellowship Journey. Her writing has appeared most recently in True Story, Hunger Mountain, Bayou, Crab… Read more »
Nina Badzin
The Air in Here

Nina Badzin - The Air in Here

Fiction
Nina Badzin is a Minneapolis-based writer. Her stories and essays have appeared in Compose Journal, The Ilanot Review, Matchbook Literary Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Modern Loss, On Being, Pedestal… Read more »
Jeff Hoffmann
Too Far from Spot

Jeff Hoffmann - Too Far from Spot

Fiction
Jeff Hoffmann’s writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, New Madrid, Harpur Palate, The Roanoke Review, Booth, Barely South, and Lunch Ticket, among others. He won The Madison… Read more »
Caitlin Killion
Transformation

Caitlin Killion - Transformation

Fiction
Caitlin Killion lives in Santiago, Chile. She holds an MFA from The New School and a BA from Georgetown University. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Aquifer: The Florida Review, The… Read more »
Kyle Stolcenberg
Twenty Miles to Toad River

Kyle Stolcenberg - Twenty Miles to Toad River

Fiction
Kyle Stolcenberg is an MFA student at Southern Illinois University. This is his first published story. Read more »

Ordinary

Courtney Craggett

We’d been waiting for our powers for so long. They should have been here by now, our superspeed and bulletproof skin and x-ray vision. When that bully knocked us down in fourth grade, our hands should have lit up with electricity, thrown him high into the changing leaves above the schoolyard. When that car came speeding out of nowhere, our muscles should have grown and bulged through our shirts, stopped it dead in its tracks. When that man cornered us in the alley the adrenaline should have turned our screams supersonic, or our feet faster than lightning.

But none of that happened. We remained ordinary and powerless. The bad things that happen all over the world happened to us too, and we couldn’t stop them. We sat by our children’s hospital beds, took out second mortgages, taught ourselves self-defense, felt too cold or too hot or too tired or too weak.

We did the little things we could. Went to work, planted gardens, loved our children as strongly and gently as we knew how.

When the hurricane struck and flooded our city streets into rivers, we pulled our boats out of storage and hitched them to the backs of our trucks. We lined the freeway, blinkers flashing to exit onto the flooded streets. We sailed the town, pulled children out of upstairs windows, carted belongings to dry land. Maybe someone with freeze breath will come along, we said, but no one did, so we sailed anyway.

When school teachers couldn’t pay their bills, we circled the capitol buildings and demanded higher wages. We brought guitars and microphones and drums and picnic blankets and pizza, and we marched until they had to hear. Mind control would make this so much easier, we said, but without it, we kept marching.

When our country locked its borders on anyone who prayed differently, held them hostage in airports or detention centers, we crammed ourselves into the baggage claim area, kept vigil day after day and night after night. Pastors preached love and lawyers argued justice and even the security guards passed out snacks and bottled water. “We love you! We love you!” we shouted through the divide to those detained inside the terminal. Too bad we can’t teleport them to us, we said, but since we couldn’t, we pulled out our sleeping bags and refused to leave until they were free.

When the scientists told us we’d warmed the world too much, when the forest fires blazed each summer and the blizzards blinded each winter, we demanded clean energy, reduced our carbon footprint, bought less, reused more, took public transportation. We would have loved the power of flight then, to spin the world backwards on its axis, turn back time and undo all our mistakes. But without a superman, time moved forward and never back, and so we changed the little bit we could.

When that cop shot that boy, we took to the streets, demanded a fair trial, and when he didn’t get it and that next cop shot that next boy, we demanded it again, and then again, and then again.

We never truly won. Murderers were freed and friends drowned and fires burned. It was easy to become discouraged, to hope some real hero would come along and save the day. But we knew the line. With ordinary power comes ordinary responsibility, and we were ordinary. The smoke would never clear, the wars never end, the hospitals never empty, the clouds never finally part, but we would keep going, and maybe that was our superpower, our own redefined victory.

Still, it would have been nice, and sometimes we check, hold our hands out in a lightning storm and wait for a spark. Stand on the top of a tall building and imagine flight. Squint hard through walls, at a world we wish we could see.

Read more »