Rob Ehle

The book started with “Mother died today” and went downhill fast after that. It was the most boring ten pages Joe had ever read. He flipped to the back after twenty minutes and saw he had 139 pages left and he did a calculation in his head and realized he was going to have to read every day for the next two weeks if he was going to finish on time, which he knew he would not do.

Jesse Lee Kercheval

It is 1966 and I am sitting on a stool at the Burger King on Merritt Island, Florida, eating French fries. My view is Highway 520 and the cars speeding up to the rare stoplight just beyond where I sit. My father, my sister, and I have been to Cocoa Beach to swim and are on our way home. I always beg to stop at the Burger King. I am always famished after swimming and there is nowhere to eat on the beach.

Ellen Bass

The first familiar, know-them-anywhere notes bless me / this savage morning. Coltrane’s horn racing / up and down every alley, in and out of veins and over the faces / of lakes and into the heart of stones. / And when he repeats ‘A love supreme’ again and again, / it’s as though, if he says it enough, he can ease / that mercy down into me, into the tiny ossicular chain . . .

Paul Tran

Given that the door had to be opened and closed, / the jeans unbuttoned and unzipped, the right hand placed over my mouth / while the left hand held me, held me //
there, held me down, I can’t help / but think, again then, then and again, that / suffering, its human position, isn’t entirely random . . .