By Lindsay Atnip

William Merritt Chase painted numerous versions of fish still
lifes, many of which were quickly purchased by museums across
the country. Because of the popularity of these works, the artist
worried that he would be remembered only “as a painter of fish.”
—placard, Art Institute of Chicago

The real thing rots. Corrupts,
Decays, time-lapses, hollow to holes.

But yours—immortal, silver-scaled, so round—
(Why should its roundness be wrenching?)

Realer than the real.

You were afraid this was what they’d remember you for.
Afraid—as if there were somehow more than this.

Here one sees, forever, how it could fill the hand—
How it would feel, filling one’s hand.

One could do worse than be a painter of fishes.

By Jessica Tanck

We have split the phone plan,
emptied the safety deposit box.

My dad is moving out of the house:
gone, the sentinel from his office

in the basement, plastic Star Wars
figurines tipped into a box.

It is hard not to imagine all of us
in our old places, hard not to fill

the house with past. Alesha (sister,
I still think, not ex-. ex-step.)

cross-legged on the futon, remote
in hand, a bowl of macaroni

in her lap. She peels home
on repeat, inside in a jangle

of keys, stays up with me all night,
perpetually lights and leaves.

Myranda (blood sister) half-absent
in her eyrie, moves from floor to desk,

floor to desk. My stepmom flickers
in the dark bedroom, in the mirrors,

on the stairs, in the corners of halls.
I am always underneath all of this,

in the skin of the basement or crossing
the yard. How many times do I tread that

bed of needles, climb to the freshly sawn-off
branches, wish a kinder mending, wish

an absence gone? Press my hands to trace
the drip of sap, what cannot be divided,

to touch what bubbles forth, what empties,
amber, from the knotted heart.

By Susan Finch

As bachelorettes, we solemnly promise the next forty-eight hours will include three brunches, two happy hours, fifteen moderate disagreements, one unfor- gettable fight, eight matching t-shirts, one bar crawl, one pedal tavern, one sprained wrist, three twisted ankles, sixteen hangovers, too many tearful prom- ises to count, and one sober regret. We are the bachelorettes and we insist.

We must begin with brunch, and in order to fit three brunches into forty-eight hours, we will congregate Friday morning. After all, brunch is the most important meal of the day. We can eat French Toast and French fries, and getting tipsy or “emotional,” (i.e. Lydia has too many feelings after bottomless mimosas) is not frowned upon. Not every restaurant serves brunch on Friday, so we must select carefully, find a place that has an all-day breakfast menu, and really, why shouldn’t a restaurant serve breakfast food all day. It’s not so hard to whip up a couple of poached eggs, is it? We will reserve the table at 10:30; the proper time to eat brunch is 11, but we already know that some of our bachelorettes will be late—particularly Tara, the bride’s sister, she’s a musician and runs on her own schedule, and of course, Felicia. She hasn’t been able to get anywhere on time since the new baby.

By George Bilgere

Featured art: United States National Museum Photographic Laboratory

A father died heroically in some Alaskan park
while trying to save his kids from a polar bear.

Long ago, when his mother gave birth
one summer afternoon in Bakersfield, California,
could anyone have prophesied,
as in an old myth, that the baby crying
at her breast would one day be killed
and partially eaten by a polar bear?

By Christopher Brean Murray

Featured art: United States National Museum Photographic Laboratory

At the edge of town, you pass a water tower beside train tracks.

A shopping cart blocks your path.

The telephone poles have no wires.

Someone has spray-painted “Fuk Yo” on the train station.

A breeze bathes your face

as seed pods click overhead.

How long’s it been since you sat in a theater?

By Natalie Taylor

Featured art: Scott Catalogue USA PC7 (National Postal Museum)

A half-eaten waffle, syrup-logged in a plastic takeout container,
dropped in the middle of the street. Bald man in a blue truck slows down,
cranes his head out the window to get a closer look. Suited folk

coming home from church swerve. It’s finally cool enough, after 37 days of dry heat,
to turn off the air conditioning, open windows.
Hooting and hollering from the apartments as someone on TV scores a touchdown.

Last night a friend came over. She has 16 pets, most of them rescue animals:
dogs, cats, rabbits, and ducks. She installed a heated pond in a spare bedroom. She’s worried
about how to transport them when she moves to Maine as a climate refugee.

A grandmother and grandkids carrying leftovers in Styrofoam walk past
the waffle. Dark feathers brush across the storm-swift sky.
A car drives over it, wheels straddling the soggy breakfast. Something exciting happens in the game:

By Tania De Rozario

Featured art: The Last Supper By H. Siddons Mowbray

1993. That’s when it happens. Two months after your twelfth birthday. It’s a sweaty afternoon. This day which blisters with possibility. This day you learn that there are demons inside of you.

You’re on your way home from school. You know something is wrong the minute you get off the bus. Your mother waits at the bus stop, teary-eyed. Your relationship has grown monosyllabic, but the tears feel like a warning, so you ask.

What’s wrong?

It is when she smiles that something inside you unravels. You realize hers are happy tears. But her smile is vacant. Placid. A Stepford Wives smile. The tears fall but there is nothing behind them. She’s a mannequin crying on command. A talking-doll with electronics scrambled.

You don’t have the language for this yet.

She grabs you, holds you tight: Nana has been saved!

By Emily Tuszynska

Featured art: Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901)

The interior landscape shifts, erodes.
          While the children sleep we shore it up
                    with flotsam but the next day another

tide-bitten chunk of coastline
          crumbles. The trouble is we’re living
                    all at once. We keep rearranging the furniture

to try to make it fit. By day we push
          aside the clutter, lay the baby
                    on the floor she drums with open palms

as if to feel it’s there. Something solid
          underneath. Mostly everything sways.
                    A tree falls and the house next door

stands empty for years. The boy holds his sister
          to the window and shows her how
                    to wave goodbye, and that’s the morning,

fingerprints in the dust of it. Outside the day
          moves away in all directions. Streetlights
                    come on. When as I walk the baby the night train  

whistles through its distant crossing,
          why does it feel like we are the ones
                    hurtling toward some unknown destination?

I lean my forehead against the icy, rattling glass,
          look through our reflection at the moon
                    rushing through branches. Look, there’s a farmhouse,

miles from the lights of any town. Someone
          turns on a lamp in one of the windows;
                    someone stands there, watching us go past.

By Peter Krumbach

Featured art: Kano Sanraku (1559-1635)

I waited for it in the fork
of a cherry tree. On the LL
train. Made bed for it in my 8th
Street room. I left gaps in sentences
where it could land. Dug holes, smoked
ham, lost bets and innocence, granted
exculpation long before it sinned.
To track its scent, I stripped
and whorled, committed perfidy,
burned effigies and caramelized
figs. I rubbed nougat with licorice
and seven sprigs of dill. I renamed
myself after it, just to see