selected by Sarah Broderick

Snow

My father was telling me about the Blizzard of ’77, how the snow kept coming, piling against the house, past the windows, the world silent and blue, something ...

On Returning to Appalachia

Southern pride, pride in southern toughness or roughness, is not something I know, not really, though I grew up here and I ran away from here when I was a teen...

Running

tonight, they are silhouetted against disco lights. silences of cosmic proportions lay between them. up above, stars: white flames enclosed in a fantasy glassh...

Laugh Track

I read an article about the mind’s eye. It’s not something I’d ever thought much about, but apparently, if a researcher says, “Picture…” (“your breakfast table...

The Hunched One

I was ten when we—my mother and I—visited Unical Teaching Hospital, the orthopedic section, to find a solution to the deformity I had developed in one of my fi...

Pumping

I wish I could be a good writer, but being a mother makes that difficult. I wish that I could sit down every day at the same time and pump out a thousand words...

Impermanence

The hot desert wind picks up, blowing gusts of pollen through the motel window. I imagine a layer of Easter-egg-yellow dust on my naked back. The comforter is ...

Buried

The telephone rings at 2AM on a cold January night, a few days into the new century. Andrea’s mother has died: suddenly in her sleep, on another continent, 6,0...

Factory

Because my dad and I were not the type to take vacations, I have never been to the ocean. But it’s always been so familiar in my dreams, as though I was one of...