Jarrett Moseley
A Possible Exit

Jarrett Moseley - A Possible Exit

Contest - Prose Poem
Jarrett Moseley is a bisexual poet living in Miami, where he was a James A. Michener fellow in the University of Miami's MFA program. He is the recipient of the 2022 Alfred Boas Prize from the Academy… Read more »
Robert Osborne
A Year of Riots

Robert Osborne - A Year of Riots

Fiction
Robert Osborne is a consultant to not-for-profit organizations. His short story ‘Children’ was a fiction finalist in Witness Magazine’s 2022 Literary Awards and his short story ‘A Year of… Read more »
Charlie Peck
Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack

Charlie Peck - Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack

Poetry
Charlie Peck is from Omaha, Nebraska and received his MFA from Purdue University. His poetry has appeared previously in Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Massachusetts Review, and Best New Poets 2019,… Read more »
Remy Reed Pincumbe
Flags

Remy Reed Pincumbe - Flags

Fiction
Remy Reed Pincumbe is a Michigan writer and bookseller whose work can be found in Passages North and Strange Horizons. They completed an MFA at the University of Arkansas, where they worked as the… Read more »
Bronte Heron
Housekeeping

Bronte Heron - Housekeeping

Poetry
Bronte Heron is a poet and educator from Aotearoa/New Zealand, currently living in New York City. They are an MFA Candidate in the Creative Writing Program at The New School and an alum of The… Read more »
Brendan Constantine
Oxygen

Brendan Constantine - Oxygen

Poetry
Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry, and Poem A Day. He currently teaches at The Windward… Read more »
Sara Elkamel
Renovation

Sara Elkamel - Renovation

Poetry
Sara Elkamel is a poet, journalist, and translator based in Cairo. She holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. Her poems have appeared in… Read more »
Robin Littell
Sidewalks

Robin Littell - Sidewalks

Contest - Flash Fiction
Robin Littell holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Miami University. She is the author of Flight, the 2018 Vella Chapbook Winner at Paper Nautilus Press. Her flash fiction has appeared in the Hawaii… Read more »
Tom Roth
Thanks for the Ride

Tom Roth - Thanks for the Ride

Fiction
Tom Roth teaches creative writing at a middle school in Cincinnati, Ohio. His most recent publications are in On the Run and Outlook Springs. He earned an MFA from Chatham University. He recently… Read more »
Roxanne Lynn Doty
The Hitchhiker

Roxanne Lynn Doty - The Hitchhiker

Fiction
Roxanne Lynn Doty lives in Tempe, Arizona. Her debut novel, Out Stealing Water, was published by Regal House Publishing, August 30, 2022. She has published stories and poems in Third Wednesday,… Read more »
Mimi Veshi
The Nanny

Mimi Veshi - The Nanny

Creative Nonfiction
Mimi Veshi is a new writer living in the Washington, DC, area. She writes essays, poetry, and short stories. The themes examined in her work include identity, culture, race, and growing up as an… Read more »
Kayo Chang Black
They Look Like Me

Kayo Chang Black - They Look Like Me

Creative Nonfiction
Kayo Chang Black is a Taiwanese Canadian writer exploring hybrid identities, global citizenship, and the intersection of cultures. Her librarian career brought her to the UAE, Bahrain, and Hong Kong.… Read more »
Jim Genia
Thiohnaka (Home)

Jim Genia - Thiohnaka (Home)

Fiction
Jim Genia—a proud Dakota Sioux—mostly writes nonfiction about cage fighting but occasionally takes a break from the hurt and pain to write fiction about hurt and pain. He has an MFA in creative… Read more »
Virginia Kane
What I Didn’t Inherit

Virginia Kane - What I Didn’t Inherit

Poetry
Virginia Kane is a poet from Alexandria, Virginia, and the author of the poetry chapbook If Organic Deodorant Was Made for Dancing (Sunset Press 2019). Her work has appeared in them., The Adroit… Read more »
Rochelle L. Johnson
Where Ashes Bloom

Rochelle L. Johnson - Where Ashes Bloom

Contest - Flash Creative Nonfiction
Rochelle L. Johnson writes about living with disability in a broken world. A professor of environmental studies, her scholarly essays appear in various journals and anthologies, and her creative… Read more »
Michael J. Grabell
Why Are Things So Heavy in the Future?

Michael J. Grabell - Why Are Things So Heavy in the Future?

Poetry
Michael J. Grabell grew up in a single-parent household, the son of a high school Spanish teacher and the grandson of an immigrant window washer from Ukraine. His poems have appeared or are… Read more »

Thanks for the Ride

Tom Roth

The only thing I remember about my uncle was the day we picked him up from prison. He climbed in the car, dripping, soaked from the rain, and he still had a cigarette in his mouth.

“Toss that,” Mom said.

“Good to see you, too, Val.”

He took one more drag, flicked the cig out the window—a fiery bug falling through the rain—and then he turned to me in the back. His hair was in a Swayze mullet, except the top had receded and thinned into the shape of a beak. He lowered his round glasses and winked at me.

“Hey there, little lady. Gimme some.”

He punched out his fist. A gold ring on his pinky. When I fist-bumped him, I could feel the scarlet diamond on my skin, the smallest heart in the world.

“Since when do you smoke?” Mom said.

“It helps me relax.”

“You can’t relax another way?”

“Another way how?”

He searched the radio stations and stopped on a Van Halen song.

“Exercise, walk, read . . .” Mom had always been a big fan of listing. She made one almost every day, and it was my job to cross off the errands on her notepad. I did this now—pick up Mitch—as she rattled on. She often spoke in them as well. Everything she learned and did could be bulleted and numbered, and a part of my life, too, would rely on lists. I’d tape them to my bathroom mirrors and kitchen cabinets, and I’d make ones for my little brother Louie to complete. A good list could get you through any kind of day. “. . . listen to music, watch TV, write.”

“Write?” he laughed. “Did you just say write? I’ve done my share of that.”

Out the window, I saw a boarded-up warehouse. Broken glass on the road. Graffiti.

“I’m not trying to pick a fight right now.”

A man slept under a rusted awning, his body curled in a tarp, shivering.

“All those letters,” he said. “Not one fucking reply.”

I turned to them now.

“Mitch.”

“Not one visit. Not even you. Bullshit.”

“Please.”

Mom tilted her feathered hair my way, and Uncle Mitch spun around as if he had forgotten about me. The rough fuzz on his face reminded me of sandpaper.

“I’m a bad mouth, aren’t I?”

I must’ve been smiling because his laugh lightened up.

“A dirty mouth could use a good cleaning, that’s what your grandma would say if she was here,” he said. “How it’s look in there?” He opened his mouth and let out an ahhh like at the dentist. Silver caps shined in the lower back. “Dirty?”

I laughed now, nodding.

“Oh no,” he said, his face full of fright. “Is it bad?”

“And stinky,” I said.

Uncle Mitch and I fist-bumped again. I wanted that ring.

“Goofs,” Mom said.

We crossed a bridge. The creek ran just below the road, so full and high from all the rain. Wide puddles had spread in the park, their surfaces reflecting the bare branches and gray sky. In the summers, Grandpa took me there, and we tossed pieces of bread to the ducks in the pond and gave them names. He once told me this town made two kinds of people—givers and goners—and he was seeing more and more of the goners ever since Uncle Mitch became one, and he said to never let anyone end up like that, ever, because there was no going back.

Uncle Mitch was watching the park.

“Do you and Grandpa name the ducks?” he asked.

It startled me, how he just read my mind, and I stuttered in my reply. I was beginning to read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. When my brother Louie was a toddler, I’d read Bradbury stories to him. At the school library, I checked out a novel about telepathy. My third-grade teacher said it’d be too hard, but I finished it, and before I was older, I believed in it, too, that one day I’d hear my little brother’s voice in my head, and he’d hear mine in his, and we’d always be there for each other.

“Had a feeling you guys did,” he said, then spoke to Mom. “He’d always say he was going to take the grandkids to the park to name the ducks, and sure enough he does now.”

“Just like he said,” Mom said.

“How is he? He say anything? About today?”

Mom looked at him. We were at a red light. Her hand might’ve touched his. I couldn’t see over the seat, but I imagined the ring burning like a meteor in the dark inner space of her palm.

“Figured I’d ask,” he said.

Mom drove onto a street of old narrow houses not far from downtown square. My grandmother grew up in this neighborhood, I’d heard, but I never knew much about her. She died before I was born. There used to be an annual fair here, but most people had moved away from this part of town. The sight of empty yards and ruined porches made me watch for ghosts in the windows.

“There it is,” Uncle Mitch said, pointing to a mint-green house, the paint peeling. “Pop Quiz, little lady. Who grew up there?”

He sang the Jeopardy theme song.

“You?”

He made a gameshow buzzer noise for wrong.

“That’s where your grandma grew up,” he said.

Again, he heard my thoughts, as if he had a tin-can phone wired to my brain. I followed his hand smoothing down his wet mullet. The diamond was a spotless ladybug in his hair. I wondered if he had worn the ring his whole time in prison. I pictured him on his cot in his cell, gazing into the red eye on his finger, and there was still a chance for him, there was still some hope he could find.

“Oldest of ten. The big sister.” He looked back at me. “Like you pretty soon.”

Mom was going to have my brother in a few months.

“That’s a helluva job,” he said. “Being a big sister. You gonna be ready?”

“I will,” I said.

“Ding-ding,” he said. “Correct answer, Big Sis. You’ll handle it all right. Just like her, you’ll get it done.” He turned to Mom. “I know one thing. If she was still alive, she’d be here in this car. She’d have written back, too. Every letter. No matter what.”

Mom said his name again.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

Mom soon pulled up to a dingy yellow house. A pit bull snarled and barked, the chain around its neck so taut it might snap. The dog whimpered when a shirtless, thin man came out and said to shut up. He waved at Uncle Mitch, then went inside, the door still open to the dim entry of the house. I thought Uncle Mitch should stay in the car.

“Well,” he said, “thanks for the ride.”

“Any time,” Mom said. “I mean it. Okay?”

Uncle Mitch said okay, then got out. The rain had slackened. A light drizzle. Almost mist. He walked to my window and said to roll it down. The air was cool and the faint rain felt good on my fingers and lips, and he was playing with the ring, turning it on his pinky.

“Big Sis,” he said, “just remember . . .” He stopped messing with the ring and glanced up at the sky. “Shit. You’ll figure it out your own way.”

There’d be other times I’d see him before he’d vanish from us. But this was what stayed with me, this car ride and his ring, a kind of dream I could never finish before his death, before he could appear in full, before there was enough time for him to give me more.

Mom honked the horn and drove away. Uncle Mitch was petting the dog.

“Okay, Big Sis,” Mom said.

I grabbed the pen and the notepad. At the bottom, I wrote call Uncle Mitch.

“What’s next?”

Read more »