Leaving the Cusp In a grotto of debdaru trees, Father sits with novitiates, boys slightly older than us but still in their teens. These are the sprawling grounds of a seventeenth century church on the banks of the Hooghly River near Kolkata. Father, a stern Romanian in his thirties, speaks fluent Bengali and is perpetually […]
Nonfiction
Leaving the Cusp
The Mirror Operator
by Sarah Mullens
This story won first place at the MAYDAY 2024 Nonfiction Contest. A logic is an attempt to understand when one statement follows from other statements, and why. Logic is not a settled body of knowledge, but a domain of inquiry, in which we encounter different logics for different purposes. Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to […]
The Retirement Clipboard and Notes, Hand-Written
by Ed McManis
This story won second place in the MAYDAY 2024 Nonfiction Contest. I taught for 40 plus years. Forty, a biblical number; the Great Flood, Jesus’ time in the desert; his number of days on Earth after the stone was rolled back. Forty years, a God hour. I worked with teachers who taught the same year […]
Life, Death, Neighbors, Houses
by Mary Allen
This story was the runner-up in the MAYDAY 2024 Nonfiction Contest. Life, Death, Neighbors, Houses I’m sitting at my kitchen table talking to my friend Anne on Zoom when a cop car pulls up to the curb in front of my house. “The cops are here,” I say. “I hope I haven’t done anything wrong.” […]
Swimsuit Scraps
by Lizzie Lawson
Swimsuit Scraps The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I tanned in the sunny patch of grass behind the toolshed, where no one could see me from the house or yard. I had procured two hand-me-down bikinis from a friend, one white and one cerulean blue, and my mission was to bronze my […]
Diva Plavalaguna Cuts Your Career Short
by Ethan Klein
1. You sit for your interview at a cubicle inside a large warehouse. Your interviewer says you’d be a risky hire, as he’s looking to bring someone on with more relevant experience. However he’s open to hearing how your work recycling cheap clothing back to citizens of the Global South, working security at a sticky […]
you hold me down
by Victoria Hood
You tell me that when I am seventeen we can take this public that when I’m seventeen the age difference won’t matter
Manifesting a Name
by Gerald Ewa
1 The detachment I felt towards my last name began when I was 13. I was newly admitted into Junior Secondary School. I sat somewhere in front of a classroom with cream-colored walls that peeled in flakes when touched, sardined between students whose faces wore radiant smiles tinged with anxiety. The class was filled with […]
May 1998
by Jeddie Sophronius
Don’t— I don’t remember if it rained that day. What I do remember was the smoke in the distance. No, not the sight of smoke, the smell, that piercing odor similar to the first few stages of decay, of rot—and maybe rot wasn’t so far off, maybe it was a corpse that burned. […]
What I Do and Do Not Say to the Girl on the Plane to Panama
by Kristi Ferguson
I notice them first during boarding. I don’t see her there, she’s camouflaged, just one of the flock. There is a cluster of them, too many women and girls together, all dressed in wine-colored gowns down to tennis-shoed ankles, with gray fleece jackets over their shoulders, tall black hats pinned to their heads. The […]
