“The Hard Burn of Traveling Light,” by Christa Romanosky
“They cut off my mother’s breast at 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, and from the lobby, we watch the low-res screen in the waiting room, color-coded for which stage of surgery she is currently in.”
“Bringing Umm Saleh Home,” by Maryah Converse
Abu Anis and Abu Alaa insisted, peeling back the mink blankets and lifting their mother between them. She was crying as they carried her out, and I was on the verge of tears, too, glaring intently into the cross-stitch project on my lap.
“Aubade on the 8th Floor of St. Luke’s,” by J. Estanislao Lopez
The hoopla of the morning sun interrupts
a man’s morbidity, doesn’t it?
—It has no capacity
to instruct us, whose hearts grow
irregular.
“How Hard It Is for Anyone to Find a Place in America”: An Interview with Maxim Loskutoff
“Half the stories are about people in cities or in urban centers of the West who are only kind of glancingly aware of the anger and the occupation that’s going on around them.”
“Obit,” by Victoria Chang
After my mother died, I looked at a photo where she had moved into assisted living from the ER. Her oxygen tube in her nose, two small children standing on each side. Her hands around their hands pulled tightly to her chest, the chorus of knuckles still housed, white like stones, soon to be freed, soon to be splashing like horses.