Nicole Ross Rollender
A Dream Where My Father Walks on Water, After He Decided to Burn His Childhood Photos

Nicole Ross Rollender - A Dream Where My Father Walks on Water, After He Decided to Burn His Childhood Photos

Poetry
A 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow, Nicole Ross Rollender is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press), and four poetry chapbooks. She has won… Read more »
Cole Meyer
Camelot

Cole Meyer - Camelot

Fiction
Cole Meyer is the editor-in-chief at The Masters Review. He received an MFA in creative writing from Florida State University and BAs in English and classical humanities from the University of… Read more »
Emily Chase
Give and Take

Emily Chase - Give and Take

Creative Nonfiction
Emily Chase is a writer living in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Her essays focus primarily on issues of class, work, family, and womanhood. Her essay “In Defense of Grudges” was selected as a notable… Read more »
Melissa Faustine Chang
La Cienega

Melissa Faustine Chang - La Cienega

Fiction
Melissa Faustine Chang is a Taiwanese-American writer and visual designer based in Southern California. She is an avid traveler, swimmer, and a one-time chocolatier. Read more »
M. Cynthia Cheung
Madonna and Child

M. Cynthia Cheung - Madonna and Child

Poetry
M. Cynthia Cheung is a physician whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Dialogist, Journal of the American Medical Association, Palette Poetry, RHINO, Salamander, Sugar House Review, and… Read more »
Lara Longo
Mea Culpa

Lara Longo - Mea Culpa

Fiction
Lara Longo is a Director of Special Projects at The Atlantic and has an MA in Cultural Studies from King's College London. Her writing has been published in jmww, Peach Mag, Bodega, and SVJ and is… Read more »
Zoe Yohn
Moonflower

Zoe Yohn - Moonflower

Fiction
Zoe Yohn holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin. She has published short stories in The Honest Ulsterman and Flyover Country Literary Magazine, and her story… Read more »
Devon Miller-Duggan
Pâro

Devon Miller-Duggan - Pâro

Poetry
Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in Margie, The Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, and Spillway. She teaches at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall… Read more »
Yehoshua November
Teachers and Students

Yehoshua November - Teachers and Students

Poetry
Yehoshua November is the author of two poetry collections, God’s Optimism (a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) and Two Worlds Exist (a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and… Read more »
Kent Kosack
To Do

Kent Kosack - To Do

Fiction
Kent Kosack is a writer living in Pittsburgh, PA. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches composition and creative writing. Kent serves as the Director… Read more »
David Kim
Tomorrow

David Kim - Tomorrow

Fiction
David Kim has an MFA from the University of Maryland at College Park. This is his first publication. Read more »
Andrew Kozma
We Are the Gifts

Andrew Kozma - We Are the Gifts

Poetry
Andrew Kozma’s poems have appeared in Blackbird, Redactions, and Contemporary Verse 2, while his fiction has been published in Lamplight, Daily Science Fiction, and Analog. His book of poems, City… Read more »
Justin Hunt
When I Noticed, at Last

Justin Hunt - When I Noticed, at Last

Poetry
Justin Hunt grew up in rural Kansas and lives in Charlotte, NC. His work has won several awards and appears or is forthcoming in a wide range of literary journals and anthologies in the U.S., Ireland,… Read more »
Anzhelina Polonskaya
You sleep. A nightscape

Anzhelina Polonskaya - You sleep. A nightscape

Poetry
Writer in exile. Against the war. Anzhelina Polonskaya was born in Malakhovka, a small town near Moscow. Since 1998, she has been a member of the Moscow Union of Writers and in 2003, Polonskaya… Read more »

To Do

Kent Kosack

Water boiled in the blue enameled pot. The man busied about the kitchen, a flurry of capability. A cake grew golden in the oven. Browning sugar sweetened the room.

From the breakfast nook in the corner of the room, the woman watched his movements. Her beer turned warm in the bottle. The leaves fell from the half-dead oak in the backyard.

Did you put the laundry into the dryer? The question came from him mid-flurry. He took a cleaver from the wood knife block and began dismembering a raw chicken.

Yes.

And did you take out the garbage?

No.

Were you planning on taking out the garbage?

It’s on my list.

He smiled.

Something funny?

He ignored her, tore the wings from the carcass, trimmed the excess fat.

She went outside via the back door. The air still and crisp. A whiff of sweet rot from the compost bin. She dragged the garbage to the curb and stood beside the hedge in front of the house watching him dump the chicken parts into a pot on the stove. Steam rose, wreathing his face, as the flesh hit the oil. He was smiling.

She reentered the kitchen via the back door.

Thank you. You do help. It’s the little stuff, you know.

The little stuff. Do. She didn’t like the sound of that auxiliary. Its connotation. She returned to the nook and watched. His amateur chef show, performed nightly for an audience of one: a seemingly random pile of ingredients chopped and sliced and stewed and roasted, transformed into a curry or a roast. Night after night, he fed her and her indecision.

Can you grab some kale for me? There should be some near the back fence.

She took a sip of warm beer, spat it back into the bottle, and headed once more toward the back door. She paused briefly in the doorway, as if unsure of whether to enter or exit, cold night or the warmth of the kitchen. The window was half opaque with the steam from the canning jars bubbling in the giant pot. Some sort of pickles, a preserved sourness.

The kale grew near the fence, the last holdout from the summer garden. Leaf by leaf she ripped the kale from the earth. Stubborn oak leaves clung to the limb above her, rustling in the wind.

I could use that kale. Especially if you want to eat sometime today.

She heard his words but understood only the tone, looking back toward the kitchen, the white light lashing out into the dusk around her, the window now completely opaque with steam, the frost-withered kale limp in her fist.

She knew what she had to do.

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