by Marco Etheridge The sailing ketch Siren’s Call rides her anchor chain in a remote cove off the Sea of Cortez. Warm water laps her wooden hull. Jack Darris, the skipper, first mate, and cabin boy, laps lukewarm whiskey. He watches the last rays of sunlight dip below the ragged Baja horizon while pondering the merits of another whiskey. He does not think long. Jack fishes the last ice fragments from the cooler beside his deck chair. Splashes whiskey into the glass. Most of the ice …

by Ben Reed Roger and I were at the beach when the fog came in. We had just finished eating. Everyone on the sand stopped what they were doing to marvel at the density and opacity of the fog, and how quickly the white mist rolled toward us over the water. And then all at once, we were in motion. Roger and I packed up our things. Mothers snapped at older …

by Ella Schmidt I was practicing softness and gentleness in the bathroom mirror, waiting for shame to take hold and make use of me. Jamie called again to allege that I had, in the span of two years, incurred a sixty-dollar fine in his name for failing to return A Dictionary of Color Combinations to the Pulaski library.I’d been on my knees with a man in the upstairs walkway of a motor inn, making a video on his phone while my friends slept on the other side of the door. We got a room in …

by Tommy Cheis Six AM. Winter Solstice. The summit of Burro Peak. In the valley a pronghorn herd assembles to receive the day’s orders. So charged they march through mesquite and cholla, hunting water and fodder. Tazhi gobble love songs to their hens. I, the fireman with elk horns, fork the fourth and final glowing stone through the east gate into the pit. This done, I enter the lodge, close the deerskin flap, and sit cross-legged with my brothers in the sacred …

The cave started out as a joke. Driving along on a New Mexico back road, we saw a sign: Experience Darkness, 1 Mile. Then a mile later: True Silence Here “Shall we?” I asked Evelyn (she called herself Eva-Luna). “True silence seems appropriate.” We’d been driving all day—or I had. Eva-Luna still hadn’t spoken. I was tired of the silence more than the driving. The desert in its persistence can also wear on you. At night, the stars are like braille in your mind—the sinister wind whispers …

Content Warning: implied childhood sexual abuse. My father can’t find the tie he wants to wear. It doesn’t take much more than that. A missing shoe, an empty scotch tape holder, that’s all the reason he needs to go on a rampage. Ordinarily, I grab my little sister, Irene, and make an exit when he starts, but we have only ten minutes left to get ready for my cousin’s First Communion. I pull Irene into my room and close the door, try to distract her from the arguing outside in the hall. I …