“I don’t like how her flesh looks,” my daughter tells me. According to Phoebe, this woman has the flesh of a winter peach.

Before roosting in the city, starlings dive—
five thousand deep in flock. Like cells they follow the
law of localization. Bound by surroundings. Step into a

crowded elevator and take on

BROWSING FOR CHAINSAWS

The carwash that neighbors
the boarded-up hospital
suddenly leaks back to life.
A rust-eaten truck rumbles by,

a keg of insecticide banging
around in the

“We made out once,” my sister says. I thought “I was in love with him for a night.”

All i want is an apple but no one / is picking these days.

My daughter Lisbeth checks Missy’s gums for bleeders. “Sometimes the damage done takes generations to make itself known,” she says, nodding along with her words, agreeing with herself. 

By now Lena was supposed to be the version of herself at whom people looked twice, and whom Alec missed, at home, now that they lived together. But she was still just herself, in stockings and hoodie, her face half-done. 

Domo

and a vague behind-the-eyes tired from reading about destruction until after midnight

At first Margaret went around whispering about the rape. The rape? Her rape? Did she own it? Did she have to keep it? Did she share it? 

Don’t know whether I was really desperate for weed or just plain curious about that dude, Duffy, but for whatever reason, I found myself back at his trailer, on the couch, watching TV and smoking his shit.

[The wind of that dream lasted a horizon]

The wind of that dream lasted a horizon
of years in my stomach, leaving a lone tree

bent in the gesture of listening. That’s why
my hand

We wiped down, scraped, rearranged, shook out, swept, mopped, vacuumed, stripped, waxed, sealed.

Welcome to Hobart Photo Stories, a one stop shop for photos that will excite the brain, the eye and the heart.

—Tara Wray, photo editor 

Julie Hrudova works and lives in

Molly liked that the Museum of Light was honest.  Inside every light is a seed of darkness, one interpretive sign began.  It is light’s job to prevent that seed from blooming.  

Southerners think that West Virginia is the north, and northerners think West Virginia is the south. 

If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.

No one should become a new parent at my age.

It must've been the late nineties. I was collecting welfare at the time. I couldn't have been more then 17. Summer vacation was coming to an end. The high school I attended was close to my

1. you never wanted to be the kind of person who balked when people entered your home without taking off their shoes

Today I kiss her knuckles & we lumber home like mammoths.

No one even realized Plain could make such a comeback. Years before, it tapered off in grocery stores. Chips. Donuts. Even Coca-Cola. All were taken over by ranch, chocolate, lime. 

It is not the anniversary of her death that wrecks me but a day some weeks before it. It is the anniversary of the day I sat on my porch, barefoot, polyester graduation trappings in hand, and thought to call her but then did not because I was too busy. 

Lyrical lines of color dripping down: a chemical skyline.

Out by the park, I say, I’ve got your blood in me, and you look at me funny, like you are waiting for this to be another mediocre joke, and it is, somehow, but I don’t know the punchline yet. 

“Isn’t there something called ‘Pizza’?” I whispered to my girlfriend one night, awake from a dream; she kissed my forehead, her breath heavy with the sweet smell of cilantro, and sent me back to sleep.