Dry Cleaning

Work theme: edited by Kevin Sterne

by Amy Barnes

I do my job well. Whatever stain I find, I clean the clothes like my mama cleans other peoples’ houses. Cold water. Warm water. Chemicals. Soap. Elbow grease. Once the garments are spotless, I move on to the hot press. I often burn my arms and hands and always leave new stains on my muslin apron, small badges of doing my job well. . . .

Abandoned Curriculums

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by Adam Jeffrey Jr.

Driving to work is black and clear in February and it doesn’t bother me. I have to be on the road by 4:15 and so I’m in the dark no matter what season it is. If it’s snowing I have to get up and go even earlier. I take the same stretch of rural road and I stay on it all the way to the school where I work. I make a total of three turns in my car in the fifty-four miles I drive to and from: one turn out of (into) my driveway, one turn to get into (out of) the parking lot of Leatherwood Middle School, and one more to get into (out of) my assigned parking space next to the grease dumpster. . . .

Double Shift

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by Megan Neary

Bridget is late for work. She turned off her alarm, somehow. Turned off three different alarms, actually. She set so many because she knew she’d be exhausted and she was afraid of sleeping through them. How did she manage to turn them all off, roll over, and return to her dream? Her dream about work. Even her dreams were about work. The horror of it should have woken her up, but it didn’t. Instead, it was Rick that did. . . .

Mind the Slipway

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by Liesl Jobson

I've been told I'm scary. I try to sound less bossy when I prompt my crew. 

Stand tall. Hips over ankles, shoulders over hips.

At least I put them in height order so the boat's weight distributes evenly. It's not hard to figure this out, but nobody does it, so too often the tall girls get stuck in the middle, carrying more than their fair share, straining their backs. . . .

Staking

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by Nick Rossi

The boy’d been anxious about working with the quiet man when they’d gotten paired. Of all the men on the crew, this man was by far the most intimidating, never smiling when the others talked about the day’s job or told dirty jokes on their lunch break. His thick eyelashes gave his silence an essence of brooding, maybe bordering on anger. The boy’d wished he’d been assigned any other crew member for a job that was essentially hanging out for eleven hours in a field. . . .

Working the Window and Thinking about the Weekend

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by Jessica Evans

This is the second Rally’s Heather has worked at. She walks to the fast food joint while Nate’s at school. The first Rally’s was all soft around the edges, deep in the suburbs. Far out where every street had thematically joined names, where dual-parent families shuffled kids from lessons to practices, stopping for fries along the way. . . .

Big Sky Bread on a Wednesday

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by Jessica Evans

We both work here, but I get paid less, so Gideon gives me the better hours sometimes as a way of saying sorry and a way of saying thank you for us letting him stay on Wheeler Street. His hair is the color of new flames, orange and yellow, textured with curls. Gid rims his eyes in thick grey eyeliner, calls it smoky a decade before palate kits are sold in shops. It's March 1999, and we have every worry in the world and none at all. . . .

HOW I GOT MY SILVER TOOTH

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by kyle françois

The downspout pulled right off the house. The summer night was nearly over. The Cubs were playing the best baseball they’d ever played. Right after my foot caught the cinderblock, the downspout pulled off the house. Just right off the house. I was smiling as I fell headlong to the ground: the whimsy of the thin metal pipe, the late summer night, the bottle of wine I already drank. The Cubs were playing good baseball. Real good ball. The Chicago Cubs were playing good ball. I had to pee and didn’t go inside to the restroom because country kids don’t rest. . . .

The Barcelona Chair

Work Theme: Edited by Kevin Sterne

by David Byron Queen

Sometimes I let my neighbor rob my house. I know. I know. I know how this might sound. It’s not something most people understand—I don’t expect them to. I know.

The next time it happens, I call the police. An officer arrives, pokes around the house. And he says, why did you call if not to report a crime.

And I say, no, a crime took place. I called so as not to not to report a crime. . . .

make believe

creative non-fiction

by Amy Suzanne Parker

The dust flies from the furniture, stirred up by a cloth in my hand as Michael Jackson’s Bad blasts in my parents’ bedroom. I breathe in too much lemon Pledge and cough. The cassette player is on high volume, and Mom, my brother, and I sing and clean to the beat of “The Way You Make Me Feel.” I try to moonwalk on the bathroom tile, my socks helping my feet slide a little. 

I am disappointed. The tile isn't slippery enough. I'm not nimble enough. . . .

my heart as a skinned deer

creative non-fiction

by Olivia Kingery

How do we learn to love the things we kill?
The albino deer has been telling me secrets. I catch her at the bedroom window, second floor, and I think to ask her the questions burning through my mind, the smell of rubber leaking from my ears, my heart the sound of a gunshot. I try to tell her I was born in the belly of the Midwest, shotgun at my shoulder before I knew what it meant to love someone. And I don’t yet know how to tell her I loved deer before I ever loved a human. . . .

march mornings

creative non-fiction

 by Claire Taylor

This morning the contractors are installing the new floors. Soon they will complete the electrical upgrade, paint the walls, wrap up the finishing touches. Everyone is wearing masks. Keeping their distance. My husband is working from the dining room table. One call after another. His organization is scrambling to create work-from-home procedures, name big picture concerns, field questions from anxious business owners who find themselves suddenly without a source of income. What can you do to help them, I ask when I briefly come downstairs to make a snack for our son. I don’t know, he says and runs a worried hand over his head. No one knows. . . .

Car Nicobar, 2004

fiction

by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar and Sudha Balagopal

“We're late for the Christmas party,” Rahul says. “Where were you?” 

Rita’s back from one of her therapeutic walks. Miles of coconut-tree-lined paths on the island of Car Nicobar, which has been home since Rahul was posted at the Air Force base here, six months ago. Today, the air outside seemed oppressive. Heavy like a held breath. . . .

by Steven Arcieri

A Family sits in a filthy car in a procession of filthy cars. A sign displays the prices of four different tiers of Soapy-Scrubz treatment. The Father clenches the steering wheel. The Mother fiddles with radio knobs— cutting off every DJ shout-speaking about Back-2-School Deals. The car is still caked with muck from the summer’s final camping trip. Its floor is littered with: soda cans, dirt clods, beach towels, pine needles, library books, sand, pizza crusts. The Son’s and The Daughter’s butts warm granola crumbs stuck in the grooves of their seats. . . .

from little arguments

fiction

by rob mclennan

At some point, a building catches fire in your small town, reducing a long-standing restaurant and the apartments above to a now-empty lot. . . .

THIS WILL ALL BE YOURS

fiction

by Jake Dean

I was staying at a farmhouse owned by my wife’s grandmother. We spent the first day doing farm stuff. Me, my wife, her dad, uncle and grandmother, collecting firewood, feeding the chooks, picking oranges. Then we sat in her kitchen drinking instant coffee and, later, cheap beer in the yellow light, and eating stuff cobbled together from what was in season. Potato and carrot fritters maybe, or maybe that was another visit. . . .

Yard Flamingos

fiction

by Natalie Warther

I never thought I’d be the kind of woman who buys yard flamingos, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. I saw them by the checkout in Hobby Lobby, and I thought, why not, one can’t hurt. When I got home I positioned her in the middle of the yard and stepped back to admire her.

I’d never seen anything so lonely in my whole entire life. . . .

by Catherine Glenn

Two years ago I told my best friends, a hetero married couple I’d known for close to fifty years, that I’m a trans person. They weren’t surprised. They said they’d known for twenty-five years and had just been waiting for me to say something. A year later, the day the husband and I both turned sixty-seven, he told me I really needed to “invest in a training bra, or something, because you kind of look like a seventh grade girl who’s starting to, you know … grow.” . . .

Christina Tarkoff’s Exclusive Palette and Inclusive World

Art

by David P. Kozinski

According to her husband, Christina Tarkoff is now “a thing” in their Drexel Hill, PA neighborhood. When the pandemic of 2020 closed schools and businesses and had people staying closer to home, she noticed families walking and biking together through the community. It occurred to her to place yard signs – like those used by construction companies and election campaigns – with some of her artworks printed on them, along the edges of her corner property. . . .