An excerpt from “All Fun, No Joy” by Eric Rampson (fiction, ’16) published at Leaf Land:

 

All Fun, No Joy

Dave looked forward to seeing Kendra in her bathing suit. She was the only WaterWigglers mom that wore a two-piece. Kendra was in shape but not a supermodel or anything. Her butt was substantial, the backs of her thighs a bit dimpled, her belly slightly rounded between the top and bottom of her suit. Dave thought she looked damn sexy, though, with her dark hair in a bun—probably, he figured, to keep it dry—and her glasses on even in the water. There was something of the naughty schoolmarm about her: the severity of those cat’s eyes frames and the tightness of the bun contrasted with her ample cleavage and the way the seat of her suit rode up just a little when she got out of the pool. Dave had become adept at exiting the pool just far enough behind her to watch unnoticed. She’d hook a thumb under one edge of her bottom and pull it lower, shift her daughter to her other arm and do the same on the other side. Sometimes, depending on the angle, Dave would get a quick glimpse further up her suit as she pulled on it.

Kendra’s daughter was Penelope. Dave knew this because the other mothers said, “Hello, Penelope,” while waving the chubby arms of their own children. He knew the names of all the babies in WaterWigglers—Penelope, Smythe, Jaiden, Janessa, Tom, Dinah, Mary, Paulo, Ricky. Dave said hello to each of them, too, waving his son Declan’s chubby arm. He made a point of learning the babies’ names day one of a new session since there was so much turn over, a mostly new crop every nine weeks. This session the only holdovers were himself, Kendra, and a strange Ukrainian woman who always wore curlers in her hair during class. He knew all the kids’ names but not a single one of the mothers’. Even Kendra’s. Kendra was just what he called her. He had settled on it because he had never heard the name in real life. It gave her the aspect of a dream, made her strange. Dave liked that.

Dave was the only father in the WaterWigglers class. The only man in a pool full of women. Well, aside from Jamieson, the instructor. Jamieson had obviously been a competitive swimmer, maybe still was. When he lifted his arms, his lats looked like tiny, washboard wings. Dave knew he, too, had lats. He must have. Even so, when he lifted his arms in front of the huge mirror in his master bathroom, all he saw was flesh puddling above his waist.

[…continue reading here]

An excerpt from “Durer’s ‘Saint Jerome in His Study'” by Chloe Martinez (poetry, ’09), published at The American Journal of Poetry:

Durer’s “Saint Jerome in His Study”

from the 1514 engraving, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Translator hunched, haloed, slant

of light, bottleglass windows lining

the casements with little sun-targets

and a skull beneath them, and Christ

tiny on his desktop cross, and along

the back wall, each thing in its place:

scissors, sunhat, time in the hourglass,

rosary on a hook, and one enormous

gourd suspended on a rope from the ceiling,

calligraphy of drying vines. The lion and dog

repose in the foreground. The trestles

of his worktable: etched in all their specific

solidity, their shadows at rest on the floor.

[…continue reading here]

An excerpt from “I Always Thought I was Fine with not Becoming a Father. But Then I Wasn’t,” by Geoff Kronik (fiction, ’12), published at The Boston Globe:

I Always Thought I was Fine with not Becoming a Father…

We pose in July sunshine, my wife and I and the two girls. The older one is 6, the younger 3, and with their bright eyes, dark hair, and shy smiles, they’re as drop-dead gorgeous as people always said our kids would be.

Except they’re not ours. The photo, from an outing with friends, depicts the family we only might have been. The friends lived nearby one summer, and we grew to love their little girls. I looked at the photo later that day, and for a long while after I wished I hadn’t.

We had spent the afternoon on the Common, and at one point the older girl asked me to take her on the merry-go-round. Afraid of falling off, she insisted that I hold her throughout the ride. “Don’t let go,” she said, and soon I realized I didn’t want to — ever. I’d never taken a child on an amusement ride, and now countless other things not done, and never to be, suddenly crashed down on me. If anything, I held on tighter. The ride ended, the girl ran back to her parents, and my sense of loss was palpable. […continue reading here]

An excerpt from “Pleas for Companionship” by Avra Elliott (fiction, ’15) published at Contrary:

Pleas for Companionship

The passion flower had doubled back on itself, the curls of new growth returning, a snake on its own tail, twisting and thriving on the stems of dead older siblings. Stacia did not know if the old growth eventually fell away, or if it became green again, and this ignorance caused some anxiety and grief when she batted away dried leaves that might have just been sleeping.

Farther down the chain-link fence, away from the flowering vine, several wooden crosses were bound to the wire. On the ground beneath the crosses plastic purple tulips, red poppies, and faded blue forget -me-nots pretended to grow from weighted pots. Purple heart, veteran’s flower, cheesy sentiment, Stacia thought when they first appeared, and assumed the victim the shrine had been erected for was someone’s grandfather, taking a turn too wide one evening. Perhaps he’d become a poster child for the care of veterans, signs saying “if only he’d been able to afford new glasses…” […continue reading here]

An excerpt from “Soon, Spring,” one of two poems by Daye Phillippo (poetry, ’14) published at Mom Egg Review:

SOON, SPRING

Snow is falling softly past the windows, no wind to drive it,
so the flakes take their time, turning, some rising a bit again

like the clouds of gnats one sees stirring by the roadside in fall.
Mother Goose preening her feathers, my father used to say

of snow like this, snow intending no harm, not blinding drivers
or the woman walking out to her mailbox on its leaning post

by the gravel road. Motherly snow, gently blanketing the garden
and house, fences and fenceposts, giving the mailbox a little

peaked cap. Blanketing also, one supposes, the white-tailed deer
we haven’t seen by the white pines for days now. Herd of nine

at last count, frisky among the fragrant, soft-needled branches,
then loping off downhill to the creek, trail into the deep woods […continue reading here]