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We pushed through the doors, back into the audition, among the lithe adults.

Under skin, I can see her beating heart frantic as a trapped toad—

Lindy knew what happens in the dark behind shut doors: girls tell stories.

“Stop looking at women’s magazines and call me in the morning.”

“I wish my father was alive to see how lazy I could really be.”

Chris Weyant

“Get the hell off my car,” she yelled, and the kids scattered like fish.

Complicity can crease the tongue back on itself like an origami dog.

Now the mulch has come between us seven turns, I’ve grown dramatic.

I stepped down painfully on my cracked ankle and nearly fell.

On the anniversary of your death, a memory sharpens, as if illuminated.

That’s what I want, to feel terrified, excited, and free, all at once.

It was like a scene in a movie; it didn’t seem real. The man kicked her.

Sonja slapped her sister. How could she shed tears for the past?

Sonja slapped her sister. How could she shed tears for the past?

Narrative Prize and Pushcart winner Anthony Marra reads “Chechnya.”

Love I know is the husk caught and throbbing under your gums.

They lived on the street, their mom a prostitute and heroin addict.

There is a pure fear, in waking somewhere you have not lain down. She runs until her blisters bleed. Then, she runs some more.

Without you, would I still be reaching out for myself now?

And so it was clear that Mia was still basically a teenager.

“If a man wanted, he could be anything and not come back.”

I care only about the little body wiggling in that plastic bassinet.

He got his wife off a German farmer, for whom he went to work one day.

It commands your presence, mocking your impatience with its steam.

shoulds & shouldn’ts unwound now to dids & didn’t

I saw her bed wasn’t slept in and knew—something had happened.