By Stephen Busby

The River

“I'm struggling to explain to myself something that my soul has already gathered in, so instead I focus on my arms, feeling their lovely push in the water, and I'm smiling broadly because it is new and I know that for once I have done the right thing.”

By Stephen Mead

In My Dweems We Fwy

“I remember a flight to Paris by night, a large moon in my window and feeling like I was an astronaut orbiting that sphere through sketchy stretches of planetary mist. The world then felt made of glass.”

By Doris Plantus-Runey

~Editors' Prize Winner~

Lucky Fish

“I noticed she was missing^stolen the minute I walked into the kitchen. He tried to hide the deed by bragging about how clean it was, the kitchen. Indeed it was, but the empty kind, so I wasn’t impressed.”

By Charles P. Ries

The Fathers We Find

“Despite hating how I dressed, having serious doubts about my lifestyle and politics, my dad still trusted me with his mink and his beloved mink farm. He didn't care that his son was a hippie. . . .”

By Karen M. Wilcox

Once Upon a Myth in Montana

“. . . this marriage is flayed alive before my eyes, reduced to the ritual ashes of prayers burned on sixty-pound paper in the flame of a vanilla-scented candle. "Change sucks, Mom!" my four-year-old colt cries.”