The New Year’s after I lost my job in the registrar’s office at the university, my husband, Julian, and I got a sitter for our six-year-old daughter. I always worried about holiday babysitters: what kind of teenager doesn’t have anywhere to be on New Year’s, and do I want to leave my daughter with her? … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: February 2015
Proof — Sharon E. Trotter
The night before my marriage ended, I drove home in a terrible fog. I don’t mean a muddled state of mind, though that would be true. I mean fog. A thick shroud that forced me to creep along the A14 at less than 10 miles an hour. My lights were worthless. They merely illuminated the … Continue reading
Recovery — M. Eileen Cronin
A man in a gray suit with a snappy red tie shook Dean Price’s shoulder, waking him from a dream about being Bob Dylan’s son. Dean reluctantly opened one eye; blue eyes blinked back at him. “I’m taking you to rehab,” said the white-haired man. He added, apologetically, “Court order.” Dean’s hand dangled over a … Continue reading
Puree — Terry Heller
“They called from Good Samaritan. Your father has pneumonia again.” She was talking to the first son on vacation in California, far from the zero winter waste of Waterloo. Dr. Parkinson was scooping the final bits from the cream-colored bowl of her husband’s cranium. She saw herself pulling that bowl away, but her imaginary grip … Continue reading
The Coyote Dies — Nick Bertelson
The trailer door opened and the sound of construction at a distance came in as more of a lull than anything. Dale did not look up. Even when the trailer’s door thwacked shut and a silence seemingly louder than the working settled in the trailer, Dale didn’t look up. Instead, he listened to his boss, … Continue reading
Stronger than Skin — Brandon Boudreaux
I think that’s a ghost – it’s difficult to determine at sixty miles per hour. The weather makes visibility on the interstate erratic, but I speed by what is no doubt a person trudging through the snow bank. I don’t see anyone in the rearview mirror, which is a shame because I would have given … Continue reading
Blog Post / Featured / Fiction 2015 / Issues / Spring 2015
An Interview with Neil Hilborn
OCD is very clearly your most popular poem online. Why do you think that happens to be the one that has the most appeal? I think that…it’s funny, when I wrote that poem, I was never trying to write a hit, you know? I was just trying to figure out a way what it was … Continue reading
Fall 2010 / Issues / Poetry 2010 / Volume 41
Some Lines for Len Schrader — Charles Aukema
Your Calvin days were black boots, black pants, black shirt, black beret, and black sports coat, Goth before Goth, and then the herky-jerk ride with your parents from Michigan to Iowa City, the matchstick game from Last Year at Marrienbad we played for free drinks in Kenny’s, infinite pool with Willy and Jones in Donnelly’s, … Continue reading
Fall 2010 / Issues / Poetry 2010 / Volume 41
In Addition To Water — Taylor Eagan
1. We lived one summer without walls. No sheetrock, just cherry brick from outside and the slivers of light that stretched between the cracks. We could hear the fruit man’s lucid voice through the skeleton of our row home. He called cantaloupe and watermelon, grapes and apples and then laughed a bit as the clicking … Continue reading
Fall 2010 / Issues / Poetry 2010 / Volume 41
Interstate Vesper — Taylor Eagan
Amend the night and listen to it buzz. Butts of cigarettes rest in the ashtray, coax the sweet dampness of the equinox deep into their filters. evensongs, footnotes of the highway’s rev, found coiling around the day like kudzu, gagging the ultraviolet quiet out. Here is the still, collective unconscious. Idée fixe. Jargon to honor … Continue reading
Coe Review 