Lance Larsen
“Everything Is a Prayer to Something”

Lance Larsen - “Everything Is a Prayer to Something”

Poetry
Lance Larsen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently What the Body Knows (Tampa 2018). He’s won a number of awards, including a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Sewanee, Ragdale,… Read more »
Laura Todd Carns
Abercrombie’s Haunted TV and Small Appliance Repair

Laura Todd Carns - Abercrombie’s Haunted TV and Small Appliance Repair

Fiction
Laura Todd Carns is a writer of both fiction and nonfiction living near Annapolis, Maryland. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Hobart, Pigeon Pages, and The Washington Post, among others,… Read more »
Colleen Mayo
Ahead of the Curve

Colleen Mayo - Ahead of the Curve

Fiction
Colleen Mayo’s writing appears or is forthcoming in The Sun, Crazyhorse, The Rumpus, Hobart, The Chattahoochee Review, The Boiler, and elsewhere. Her work has received special mention for the 2019… Read more »
Scott Nadelson
Among Thorns

Scott Nadelson - Among Thorns

Fiction
Scott Nadelson is the author of seven books, most recently the story collection One of Us. His work has recently appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Best… Read more »
Will Ejzak
Backpedal

Will Ejzak - Backpedal

Fiction
Will Ejzak is a high school English teacher in Chicago, Illinois. His short story collection What to Do When You Find Him was selected by Roxane Gay as a finalist for the 2020 Flannery O’Connor… Read more »
Hannah Whiteman
Callinectes Sapidus

Hannah Whiteman - Callinectes Sapidus

Poetry
"Set in Maryland" Contest Winner Hannah Whiteman received her MFA from the University of Florida. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she teaches English. Read more »
Ed Meek
Climate Change

Ed Meek - Climate Change

Poetry
Ed Meek has had poems in The American Poetry Journal, The Sun, Plume, and The Paris Review. His new book, High Tide, is available at Aubadepublishing.com. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, with… Read more »
Jeff Liao
Desire Lines

Jeff Liao - Desire Lines

Creative Nonfiction
Jeff Liao is a writer and student from New Jersey. His work appears in Ninth Letter and The Interlochen Review. He has received recognition from the National YoungArts Foundation and the U.S.… Read more »
Charlie Clark
Devil Watching as, in the Midst of Your Isolation, Your Child Insists on Opening All of Her Umbrellas

Charlie Clark - Devil Watching as, in the Midst of Your Isolation, Your Child Insists on Opening All of Her Umbrellas

Poetry
Charlie Clark studied poetry at the University of Maryland. His work has appeared in The New England Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Smartish Pace, Threepenny Review, West Branch, and other journals.… Read more »
Claire O’Connor
Home From the Wars

Claire O’Connor - Home From the Wars

Fiction
Claire O’Connor is an educator who has worked with students of many ages in New York, California, Idaho, Morocco, Malaysia, Greece, South Africa, and Scotland. Her stories have appeared or are… Read more »
Sari Fordham
My Father Thinks Danger Is Beautiful

Sari Fordham - My Father Thinks Danger Is Beautiful

Creative Nonfiction
Photo credit: Natan Vigna Sari Fordham teaches creative writing at La Sierra University. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Green Mountains Review, Booth, Passages North, and The Chattahoochee Review,… Read more »
Cezarija Abartis
Shakespeare. Chekhov. Love.

Cezarija Abartis - Shakespeare. Chekhov. Love.

Fiction
Photo credit: Russell Letson Cezarija Abartis has published a collection, Nice Girls and Other Stories (New Rivers Press) and stories in Baltimore Review, Bennington Review, FRiGG, matchbook,… Read more »
Robert Erle Barham
Small as This

Robert Erle Barham - Small as This

Creative Nonfiction
Robert Erle Barham is an English professor at Covenant College, and he lives with his family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  His work has appeared in Appalachian Review and River Teeth’s… Read more »
Bryana Atkinson
Sorrel

Bryana Atkinson - Sorrel

Creative Nonfiction
Bryana Atkinson is a writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a graduate student in Composition Studies. Bryana has been writing for as long as she can remember, starting with a… Read more »
Melinda Brasher
The Symbolic Cemetery

Melinda Brasher - The Symbolic Cemetery

Creative Nonfiction
Melinda Brasher spends her time writing, traveling, and hiking. She loves the smell of autumn leaves crunching and the smell of orange blossoms in spring. You can find her work in Short Circuit,… Read more »
TELEPHONE
The TELEPHONE Project

TELEPHONE - The TELEPHONE Project

Project

Remember that game you played when you were a kid? Telephone? The TELEPHONE project is a game too, but on a grand scale. This is no game of giggling kids whispering a sentence around a circle. The… Read more »
Mike Nees
Wintering

Mike Nees - Wintering

Fiction
Photo credit: Alex DiGiovanni Mike Nees lives and works in Atlantic City. He’s a case manager for people living with HIV. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Driftwood, Typehouse Literary… Read more »

“Everything Is a Prayer to Something”

Lance Larsen

     — overheard in the produce section at Kroger’s Pears are a prayer to smooth, parsley a prayer to leafy doubt, kiwis a prayer to what fits in the fist, a bristliness almost marsupial. Driving home is a prayer to stop sign and crosswalk with the sun streaming in on the sly like a third-grader telling a first-grader how adults commit parenthood. The sheets flapping on the line are a prayer to wind, lemonade stands a prayer to summer and sticky quarters, baby teeth a prayer to white. My mother saved my teeth in a Sucrets tin, and at night I’d shake them under the blanket, a prayer to morning, may it come quickly, a rattling like muffled rain. And why not let it rain in a grapefruit orchard in late August outside Ventura? We picked and picked and afterwards in the kitchen my mother performed her alchemy. One moment she cradled a grapefruit as big as a softball. The next she held a dripping pink globe in her left hand, and from her right hung a sliced peel, all in one piece, like a skinned rattlesnake, which she nibbled at, each scrape of her teeth a prayer to thrift, a prayer to scrimp and stave off and thank you and the Great Depression, which she was a helpless child of. She washed dishes the same way, we all did, no dishwasher in our house, each swipe of the washrag was Dear Lord, each clean glass hallelujah—until I reached into the dirty suds for a saucer one night and grabbed a butcher knife instead. Is this how it’s done, Lord? Is this how you slice us open for our own good? What gushed forth was a prayer to this life not the next, what dripped across the floor were little prayers to what comes next, a dot-to-dot from kitchen to bathroom, which the cat lapped up, then sat on her haunches, asking for more.
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