Vignettes: A Literary Photo Album, July ’26 Editor: Vallie Lynn Watson Guest/Outgoing Managing Editor: Taryn White Incoming Managing Editor: Tyler Campbell Vishaal Pathak, “That Afternoon in Daman,” photograph Letter from the Editor by Vallie Lynn Watson Letter from the Guest Editor by Taryn White Fiction “Olives” by Lori Sambol Brody…
Read MoreEggs Melissa Zamora __________ Fluorescents hum. The dairy case throws damp cold from its open mouth. It settles in the hollow under her throat. List in hand, columns penciled in her handwriting, every category checked but this one. Same categories. Different week. She is at the eggs. Large is easy.…
Read MoreAll Summer Claudia Smith __________ End of May Either the postcard-bright sting of chlorine in an emptied pool, scrubbed after the bodies were found, or the sour-sweet algae of early summer at a motel with window units. Or could be the mosquitoes through the cracked window with no screen, or…
Read MoreMusic Camp, 1978 Marybeth Rua-Larsen __________ Behind the concert hall, after dusk, the moon oozed through an elm’s branches like an egg yolk, not solid, not liquid, quivering. His arms around my waist, then feathered to my backside as he pulled me in. Let’s dance, he said, to no music…
Read MoreHidden Inside Bob Rehm __________ The bullets were bright and shiny in my 8-year-old hand. And they were heavy, all boxed up in neat rows. I show them with pride to my new friend from down the block. Bullets meant my Dad has a gun. And guns were cool. My…
Read MoreThe Feast Joani Reese __________ Our train rolls south from Bridgeport past the blue noses in Fairfield and Westport — the mistake that is Stamford. Peeping into Greenwich, Manhattan’s ermine-lined bedroom, we ride the express train into Grand Central for the Feast of San Gennaro. Shawl-clad grandmothers waddle down Spring…
Read MorePremeditation Niles Reddick __________ We became friends on the yearbook staff in junior high school. In the darkroom, we hid a pack of cigarettes and a pint of vodka by removing a ceiling tile. We smoked and mixed vodka in Sprite while we developed pictures of students and teachers in…
Read Moreuntitled playlist Meghan Haydon __________ Dead Man’s Party – Oingo BoingoMy hair was bleached white from the sunthen, chubby cherub cheeks speckled withfreckles. “Angel kisses,” my mom used tocall them, pressing her lips to my forehead. Iliked to press those cheeks against thescalding concrete back then, watch the antsmarch one-by-one…
Read MoreBrydon Caldwell __________ Trapped It was one of the last times that I saw my mother truly irate. Standing in the middle of the driveway, wrapped in her blue terry housecoat, in full volume against the animal control officer. She’d forgone her wig, so lonely wisps of hair clung to…
Read MoreGradually She Finds Her Voice John Janelle Backman __________ SuffocatinginherenoroomtotwitchevenbetweenheartlungsdiggingofribsmustgetOUT Mr. Johnson held open his pre-calculus lesson planner, which listed all the assignments for the year, and his finger stabbed at a column mostly of blanks. “See? Here, here, twice that week, here again…John, you’ve missed a ton of homework,”…
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