As sticky as syrup-soaked gruel
eyes closed with dreamy leftovers
eyes closed tightly as if seamstresses
sewed those viscous visions inward.

What now?
Rose.
Rose was the only person I trusted, the only one who was kind to me that day. I went for a long walk and wound up at a quiet park where bushes exploded with red and yellow flowers reaching for the sky. Too late, I noticed three guys closing in behind. The last thing I remember was the smell of their sweat and the red mud caked on their boots.

You are cold,
to my palm,
to my cheek,
cold to my tongue.

Elonda stared out of her window, squeezing her face into the entire frame, and her breath began to fog up the dew-struck glass. She quickly used her sleeve to wipe away a near perfect circle. The winter was visible again.

Miss Beulah was not worried about a few dead feral cats, especially the ones that had lived for years in her woodpile before they met their sanguinary demise. She had discovered them gruesomely slaughtered with violent gashes to their necks just after a weak, late autumn hurricane had wreaked havoc on her yard and flooded her collard patch. Apart from believing that a bobcat had done the killing, her only real concern was removing the corpses from her yard. But a week later …

June 1941
“Get up,” I whisper, crouching on the concrete, grasping the bars with fingers picked raw and bloody. I consider rapping the bars with the key — the precious key!— but I don’t dare. The guard might be a light sleeper.

Because my head is full of one hundred flowers.
Because dandelions were taken; ditto orchids
(each a bookend on the hardy-to-fragile spectrum).
Because I don’t compete with or covet the rich
and shallow soil but trade in the depths of mingled roots.

Lying amidst terra cotta
shards, in backyard rituals
we stared at a bleaching dot
of sun, hoped tanning might
remind us of no—bad—days. I told you

Home is a mold, that I cast upon you
in the shape of this poem, that fits only you.

Home was the way you described every color:
hunter green, sunset orange, and midnight blue.

Bill returned home after a particularly strenuous workday to find Loretta in the living room nose to nose in conversation with a stranger. Rather than interrupt, or inquire what was going on, he observed from the doorway.

When I was a child I went out to the long hedge
along the back of our property. I could crawl
in under the leaves and branches to the middle.

Cordelia Cates stepped out onto her deck overlooking the lake as she cradled her coffee cup, which had more than a splash of Bailey’s Irish Cream added in for good measure. She sighed as she wrapped her cardigan around her with the other hand and surveyed the red clouds overhead.

The situation was this: Bret’s ringing phone had woken him up just before daybreak. Jeff, his once fairly close, but now hardly close friend, sounding frantic, had asked him to meet him. Bret had said he would and asked where, and Jeff had calmed down enough to give him clear directions.

basking in the words
of a poem set aside, long forgotten
the warm glow of verses once familiar
comfort like a soothing bath
taking you back
to another time and place

Due to historical persecution of queer individuals, trauma pervades queer lives, communities, and literary representation. Given the prevalence of trauma in queer narratives, can queer protagonists define themselves beyond the atrocities they face? In his epistolary novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019), Ocean Vuong demonstrates that while trauma fundamentally shapes the queer Vietnamese American protagonist, Little Dog, he is equally defined by his response.

When Nataliya had finished the last crumbs of her cake, I paid the bill and we left the café, the bell tinkling as the door closed behind us. At half past four, the grey winter afternoon had already turned to night. I offered Nataliya my arm, as the cobbled street was slippery with frozen snow.

I would wake and watch
from my bedroom window
as the snow fell in a waterfall of white
under the glow of the streetlight,
a suburban beacon shining
on my narrow side road.

It’s almost midnight when they leave the beach, tired, thirsty, still too high from the freely flowing weed. They’re jammed into Ed’s aging blue Volkswagen, Lisbeth up front, Jonathan and Denise crowbarred into the tiny back seat as they head onto the Mid-Cape Highway for the trip back to Manhattan from Truro.

I find myself lying down on my bathroom floor again, staring at the underside of my sink, talking to my inner self. It’s only two years. Two years and then we’re done. (Why I refer to my inner self as a “we” requires a lengthy psychological profile not relevant to this particular story, but it’s often because I view my internal voice as a separate being…

Colonel George Corkhill of the Chronicle was ushered into Justice Samuel Miller’s parlor, and anxiously removed his hat. His face was flushed, and his countenance bore the marks of bad news. “The position of Chief Justice will be offered to Senator Conkling, sir.” Corkhill spoke with hesitation, for he was thrusting a dagger into the heart of his father-in-law.

If this is not a meat bun from heaven, Dr. Wu doesn’t know what would it be. A meat bun from heaven (天上掉馅饼) is a Chinese saying, meaning pure luck.
Dr. Wu has worked as a Rehab physician in the hospital in Texas for a few years. A few weeks ago, her department chief, only in his fifties, suddenly left.

When Tibby arrived on her first night with us, we let her out into the fenced backyard. On the steps, she paused for an instant, ears up, nose twitching, poised like an Olympic sprinter in the starting blocks. In the twilight, something caught her eye. Slowly, she stalked, like a panther, into the grass. Then she dashed, disappearing under the arborvitae. In a moment, Tibby emerged, triumphant, shaking a small rabbit between her jaws.

I nursed a lamb when I was eight or nine. Its mother had forsaken her, and Dad, sensing a good learning opportunity, tasked me with feeding her every morning. She had watery eyes with dark, horizontal irises; a wet, pink nose; and kinky, brown wool that felt fantastic against my cheek. We called her Rosie.

They sat in an outdoor café having a latte and a ham cachito. Her boss talked about the weather, how the government wanted to subsidize payroll, which was their way to get inside the company and eventually take it over. He put a cigarette in his mouth and offered one to Alejandra. She declined. She didn’t smoke. And while she enjoyed watching the clouds above the Avila mountain, the spacious sidewalks covered in tables, and people playing an afternoon game of chess, she was still wondering why her boss asked her to lunch.