Emma Bolden

Under the bloomed moon I forged & fortuned, I saw / all the forests as leaves, as the wind that broke between / & over & into. The force of nature as the force of beauty / sweet as a betrayal, the once which carries within / its own never & never its own more.

Lou Mathews

Coming out of the freeway tunnel in Santa Monica is a transformation. Dark, subway-tiled, no radio reception, then, instantly a burst of music, blue sky, white sand, and the glory of the ocean across Pacific Coast Highway. I feel like an ancient Greek coming out of the underworld.

Zoë Dutka

I was at home, trying in vain to bring my husband’s fever down with wet T-shirts and a small bowl of ice water. We had been without running water since the drought started in October, and it was April. The results had come in the form of a text from my brother-in-law. “There are two strains of malaria,” he wrote, “the nasty kind, and the deadly kind. Benjamin has both.”

Laura Schmitt

The noodle maker came down Main Street with heavy sheets of dough draped over her shoulders, pushing an enormous, rickety cart that held a worn wooden cutting board, three giant pots of furiously boiling water, dozens of prepared condiments and toppings in neat wooden drawers with smooth brass handle pulls, several folding stools hung on wooden pegs, a crock of chopsticks inlaid with abalone shell, and a sharp cleaver in a slot.