Julia Cohen

History begins with someone else’s memory of you. It begins with accepting that memory as your own. I want to remember the sensation of curling into my grandfather’s woolly armpit as he reads to me months before he died. A stack of books in bed with us. But all I can remember is climbing up the furry stairs on all fours and looking over the top step into his bedroom to see if he’s awake.

Lindsay Starck

What was she thinking?

That depends. When she stepped onto the tarmac in Irkutsk, the sky crisp and glittering, she was wondering why it had taken her so long to come to Siberia. But earlier, when she boarded the stale plane in Beijing, she was trying not to think about the world’s first marathoner. (You know: the one who died.)

Alessandra Lynch

Going now to dark, going now to write in the dark / love-cabinet. The red fish like a stuffed glove on the desk, / going out of gray all the time, gray seeping back.

Robert Lopez

The first time someone called me a spic was during recess or after school in the playground or in the park across the street from my house.