ESSAY | Trying To See – Erin Ruble

On a sunny September day in the early 1990s, a German couple taking a shortcut through the rock spires on the Austrian-Italian border spotted the head and back of a man jutting from a patch of half-melted ice. The couple, thinking they’d stumbled across the corpse of a mountaineer, told the owner of the inn they were staying at. He, in turn, contacted the authorities, who sent a forensic investigator.

COMFORT FOODS // Ends and Pieces – Lisa Ochoa

You’ve probably never noticed them. Their red and white box usually sits well below their thick-cut, smoked, and maple-flavored cousins in their clear ‘look at me!’ packaging. Or, sometimes, Ends and Pieces aren’t displayed at all, and you have to ask the butcher for them. Because mind you, they are the ends and pieces, the leftovers, the scraps. Who would want them?

My mom, that’s who.

Pero’s Promise – Tamara Lazaroff

At the village bus stand, with my packed bags, I’m crying my eyes out as I kiss the faces of the row of relatives—Uncle Mitko, Beti, Verka, Tanja, Mirka, even Baba Slobodanka who Branko has carried on his back. Others, too. They’ve all come to say goodbye before I go back home to Australia. And…

Bettina von Arnim Accuses Me of Unfaithfulness – Charles Haddox

I dreamt one night about a bright-eyed young woman with dark hair who accused me of being unfaithful to her. Her accusations were apparently true, which troubled me deeply after I awoke. I had never been unfaithful to anyone but had myself suffered the pain of betrayal once or twice when I was young. I…

Moving Towards The Yes – Tamara Lazaroff

I have never felt it so clearly: the field of independent, potential affirmatives, the ‘yes’, the ‘yeses’ to all of the pleasure and power, freedom, purpose and desire that is mine to choose and discover.

Leaving – Yin F Lim

Glossy lips, upturned in a cheesy grin. This is what I see when I think about the morning I left my country. The lips of a Ronald McDonald statue, painted red to match its garish hair and its clown’s outfit. Broad lips stretched into a smile that seemed much too bright under soulless eyes. I…