Warner James Wood
A game of hold ‘em

Warner James Wood - A game of hold ‘em

Contest - 3rd Place
Warner James Wood graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Human Evolutionary Biology before completing his MFA in poetry at the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. He now… Read more »
Sarah Cedeño
Aftermath

Sarah Cedeño - Aftermath

Creative Nonfiction
Sarah Cedeño’s work has appeared in New World Writing, The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, Redactions, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. She lives in Brockport, NY with her… Read more »
Richard Becker
Chesapeake

Richard Becker - Chesapeake

Poetry
Richard Becker’s poetry has appeared in America: The National Catholic Review, Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose, Cold Mountain Review, Two Words For, among others, and his sequence,… Read more »
Caitlin Garvey
Doll Hospital

Caitlin Garvey - Doll Hospital

Creative Nonfiction
Caitlin Garvey is a student of creative nonfiction in Northwestern University's MFA program. She has an MA in English Literature from DePaul University, and she teaches English composition at a… Read more »
Michelle Matthees
Homemade

Michelle Matthees - Homemade

Poetry
Michelle Matthees’ poems have appeared in Memorious, PANK, The Prose Poem Project, and numerous other journals. Her first collection, Flucht, will be published by New Rivers Press in October of… Read more »
Greg Allendorf
Hominids

Greg Allendorf - Hominids

Poetry
Greg Allendorf is originally from Cincinnati, OH. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from such journals as Smartish Pace, Subtropics, The Portland Review, Narrative Northeast, The Journal,… Read more »
Trent Busch
Lit

Trent Busch - Lit

Poetry
Trent Busch is a native of rural West Virginia who now lives in Georgia where he makes furniture. His poems have appeared in many journals including The Best American Poetry, Poetry, The Nation,… Read more »
Keith Dunlap
Motorboat Motorboat

Keith Dunlap - Motorboat Motorboat

Poetry
Keith Dunlap’s first collection of poems, Storyland, was published in June 2016 by Hip Pocket Press. His work has appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Review, The Carolina… Read more »
Melissa Llanes Brownlee
My Kuleana

Melissa Llanes Brownlee - My Kuleana

Fiction
Melissa Llanes Brownlee is a writer born and raised in Hawaii. She graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with an MFA in Fiction. She then moved to Japan to teach English, where she… Read more »
Eleanor Stanford
November, your metal teeth

Eleanor Stanford - November, your metal teeth

Contest - 2nd Place
Eleanor Stanford is the author of two collections of poetry, Bartram's Garden and The Book of Sleep. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon… Read more »
Michael Homolka
Rhapsody with Impasse

Michael Homolka - Rhapsody with Impasse

Poetry
Michael Homolka is the author of Antiquity, winner the 2015 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. His poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The… Read more »
Amy Krohn
The House in Illinois

Amy Krohn - The House in Illinois

Poetry
Amy Krohn lives with her husband and three children in rural Wisconsin. Her poems have been published in Hummingbird, Kindred, Mason’s Road, Red Savina Review, Seems, Third Wednesday, and Time of… Read more »
James Gyure
The Meter Reader

James Gyure - The Meter Reader

Fiction
James Gyure lives, writes, and makes wine in western Pennsylvania, where he had a long career as a college administrator. His recent work appears in Tahoma Literary Review, Gravel, Hot Metal Bridge,… Read more »
Terri Trespicio
The Rules of Boxball

Terri Trespicio - The Rules of Boxball

Contest - 1st Place
Terri Trespicio is a New York–based writer, speaker, and branding expert. A former senior editor and radio host at Martha Stewart, she recently delivered a TED talk ("Stop Searching for Your… Read more »
Allegra Hyde
Why I Killed My Canary

Allegra Hyde - Why I Killed My Canary

Fiction
Allegra Hyde's short story collection, Of This New World, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award and will be published in October 2016. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Missouri… Read more »

Why I Killed My Canary

Allegra Hyde

My husband’s affair thrilled me. Seeing him skulk around—the coded phone conversations, the late nights—I felt a passion I hadn’t in years. Not for him, but for the affair itself: the heat swelling in the space between us. Ten years we’d been married, neglecting to have the children who might have filled that chasm. But now: the affair. To imagine his mistress was exhilarating, like the joyful wince of getting spanked. No doubt she was prettier than I. Younger. Studying cultural anthropology at Smith, performing violin concertos on weekends. No doubt she kept her mouth sloppily lipsticked and had pale ears like little mushrooms. “Mon petite truffle,” my husband would whisper, leaning across tables in dim tavernas. Whispering, though surveillance was improbable. The taverna was three cities removed from where I waited, half-asleep in our livingroom, my knitting needles dropped to the floor. And yet, in a way I always dined with them, didn’t I? I made my husband sweat, made the pretty girl wonder. Of course I’d heard. Of course.

What I enjoyed most, however, was imagining the moment the pair parted. Not because I liked to see them separate—this was a trial for them and I—but because of the rush of inarticulate affection such a split engendered. I felt protective in those moments. I wanted to take the affair in my arms and kiss its forehead and tuck it in at night.

I loved what my husband and I had created: this other life suspended between us.

Of course, I should have known not to get to so attached. Eventually, clandestine phone calls become more wearisome than titillating. The lunch break rendezvous more tacky than romantic. My husband would have to leave me, as he must have long promised his mistress. Or worse: he would leave his mistress and renounce the whole affair.

He left her. I could tell, immediately, something was wrong. He appeared home for dinner three nights straight, once with a exquisitely wrapped box of éclairs, and then with a silver cage containing a canary. I was beside myself. It made me weak, the way my husband petted my shoulders, stroked my hair. The bird’s propitious warbles. Cheerup-up, it sang endlessly, cheerup-up-up. I felt the void between my husband and I open wide and frigid. We had never been farther apart.

Weeks passed. My husband continued his behavior, oblivious—or perhaps spurred—by my deteriorating condition.

“Darling,” he said one night, sliding a pearl bracelet from a velvet box, “for you.”

He smiled at me shyly, even pleadingly, and I imagined him having handed a similar bracelet to his mistress. Did he feel guilty? Was the affair still on his mind? I felt briefly revitalized. I began to hope.

“The pearls are from Anguilla,” my husband murmured, “where we had our honeymoon.”

I gasped, horrified.

“You’re crying,” said my husband. He seemed pleased.

I ran upstairs and spent the rest of the day locked in my sewing room. I decided I would be as wretched as possible. I would drive him back into the arms of his mistress. Retreating to my bed, I let my hair go uncombed. My clothes unlaundered. I wept. My husband fretted. He carried the canary’s cage up to my room, let the yellow bird warble on and on. He bought more gifts. He led in doctors who I immediately sent away. It destroyed me, seeing the resolve on his face. The dumb tenderness. “Go to her,” I wanted to say. “Slip away and go to her.”

But I couldn’t admit I’d known, couldn’t ruin what little I had left.

Cheerup-up, said the canary. Cheerup-up-up-up.

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