You can be tall or short; you can be heavy or thin; you can have long hair or short hair or black hair or blonde or purple; you can have freckles or rosacea or clear skin; but none of this will matter if you have a mustache. The mustache becomes you.… more
Category Archives: CREATIVE NONFICTION
Sorry, Ruth, Ma Johns, Miss Ferguson
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Ian C SmithMiss Ferguson doesn’t mind me smoking, its aroma reminding her of her dead father, and tells me my surly expression, which I nurture, spoils my looks as I sense her warming to me. Being too young to attract girlfriends is my saving grace in her eyes.… more
Superbloom en plein air
CREATIVE NONFICTION by J.D. IsipPeople will tell you that they always saw what you were, but they’ll never offer up why they kept the information to themselves. Who are we to give a thing a name?… more
Internal Compass
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Andrew BertainaThere was always something alluring about disclosure with strangers, the assurance that your secrets or failings would be forgotten, buried away in that person’s mind as they took a train to a different city, met a different person, until all the new memories fell as thick snow over the slender tracks of your disclosure.… more
Calluses
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Matthew AlcornInnocence is an epidermis, shielding our sensitive nerves from pain. Upon seeing death, that skin sloughs off all at once, a full-body degloving, and even the pressure of the air around you becomes too much to bear, a searing pain that never quite stops, ebbing for a time, then flooding back.… more
Eros v. Amor
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Nancy C.In year 24 together, he and I seem to have arrived at a new level of emotional intimacy, practically a symbiosis. That we have no sex and are in love at the same time leaves me rather dumbfounded.… more
Stab
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Leo Marcel SchumanMy friend Billy was the price. It still feels odd to call him a friend. Friends do not stab each other the way I drove a blade into his back that afternoon.… more
Love, Reincarnated
CREATIVE NONFICTION by K Anand GallLong before I knew of ghosts as apparitions, I understood them simply to be the presence of the deceased. In this way, I was raised with death, a silent death that lurked largely unmentioned in corners.… more
Man Enough
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Christian EscalonaWhen I think of model trans men, I think of those brave enough to share their stories on social media, brave enough to ignore the comments that say go kill yourself or you will always be a woman. I think of those proudly wearing pink, blue, and white, the colors of the trans flag, those who march in rallies, holding signs that say, “Protect Trans Kids,” those who use their preferred bathroom regardless of how their outsides appear to the rest of the world. I was never that brave.… more
My Father and Me Too
CREATIVE NONFICTION by Anthony J. MohrMy father sexually harassed Mamie Van Doren. He did so in a scene from Guns Girls and Gangsters, a crime movie released in January 1959, the month Alaska became a state, the year Mattel launched the Barbie doll. I was a sixth-grader.… more
