Trees of My Life

by Angela Townsend

The trees read each other with a generous eye.

The maple was the real author, as anyone could see. Strong and seasoned, her storm memoirs made the best-seller list. She turned cayenne in October, a refined lady blushing graciously at all the acclaim. I made fairy gardens at her trunk and whispered secrets into the little holes where small creatures delivered her Times. Continue reading

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If I Were to Taste You Again

by Tara A. Elliott

It would be all almonds, the sweet, cocooned belly
of the melon, berries rupturing black against my tongue. Continue reading

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Young Marriage

by Andrew Payton

In our first apartment, above the small
plaza where schoolchildren rehearse
their patriotism, and a fruit seller scatters
pigeons with her knife’s wooden butt Continue reading

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Nooshin and the Forgotten Coast

by Samira Shakib-Bregeth

After she got over her second marriage, Nooshin left Georgia and drove through the Emerald Coast, where her two friends, Brit and Shahin, rent out their vacation homes all year—except for the low season in September when the hurricane season peaks—to Apalachicola, Florida. Nooshin wanted fresh oysters from Oyshack. Chris, who she met in college, wrote about the place east of Highway 30A a month before he went to Rome to find himself.

Twenty years ago, instead of marrying Chris out of college, she married his best friend, Jake, now her first ex-husband. Continue reading

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The Hawaiian Alphabet

by Colleen Kam Siu

Hapa is a Hawaiian word
that means part,
but more recently, half.

In 1870, Hapa
meant part-Hawaiian
and part-Chinese laborer;
the latter imported
for their bitter strength, eager
to escape broken promises
in Kwangtung,
not yet knowing
that’s the material
that makes a man
who calls himself Master.

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