Read and view the work of artists from Previous Issues.
I was lying in the bathtub one night thinking about Simon (Bren, don’t be mad, I only liked him because you were gone and because I was so lonely), and I lay there picturing him and Corrine together until the water went lukewarm. When I wiped the steam from the mirror, I looked the same as I always had but inside I was completely numb. Every which way my mind went was bad—Simon, Ziggy, you.
Jenny steered the car out of the vast Walmart lot to head west out of Moberly on Highway 24. Since starting the job as a cashier six months ago, she drove back and forth this way four days every week. The pay was low, only twelve dollars per hour, but there was the health-care benefit. Child support from Karl was hit or miss.
Amy fell in love with soldier Blackie Boyette because there was a war on, and her daddy was gone to the front. “Your papa’s off to the seven seas,” jived the Andrews Sisters on every jukebox in town. Amy never had enough time with him, her big, strong daddy, Captain Tom Archer from the Kentucky mountains, so fiercely devoted to the U.S. of A.
