Adele Evershed

I tooty down into the attic to sort through boxes of Dad’s old Groggs. My hand scrams across the past—time spent in the damp of a dying language. The tamping rain sopping into all that dirty history held now in my Bamps’ Davy lamp and Da’s heavy metal snap tin. Dust floats in the crawl […]

When Olwen gazed in the mirror the day after her sixtieth birthday, she saw tiny icicles clinging to her eyelids. At first she assumed it was sleepy dust, but as she rubbed her fingers over them, her eyes felt gritty, as if she’d forgotten to remove her eye makeup—though she hadn’t worn any in years.

Five years before Aggie was born, the grandmother she never knew looked at her daughter, and recognized original sin in the apple of her cheeks. So, she begged God to keep her June safe. After, she forgave God, but she was unable to forgive June.   Four years before Aggie was born, June tried to

  I vacuum the corner I have picked out, put my hand in the pocket of my apron, and touch the colorful mosaic brooch like a talisman. It belonged to my mother and is shaped like an almond nut with brightly colored tiny glass tiles making a picture of two swans. Fishing it out, I

Someone abandoned a grey cardigan in front of ‘Scenes of War in Medieval Times’ at The Met today. It was as if they couldn’t bear the warmth of wool next to their house-bound skin when naked women were hanging like dirty washing over rocks and horses in Degas’s painting of misfortunes. Nobody picked it up,

I listen to the words of a dead poet, read by a live one over Zoom. Apparently, he died last week, and we are now forced to think about the deceased, about him buried in the words or the spaces he left behind. Then the poet asks us to make a list of synonyms for

I’ll never forget her because she was the first to talk to me on that bright, dreaded first day of uni. But beyond the circumstances of our meeting, her eyes left the most profound impression. They sloped down at the edges, making her seem so much older than me, and in their soft doe browness,

“There was a man who dwelt in a churchyard”.   “What does dwelt mean?” Maddy asked, wrinkling her nose. ” He lived by a churchyard,” Nick explained, silently cursing himself for using a Shakespeare quote, but being an old English major he just couldn’t help himself. “And one night each year…”. Maddy interrupted again, “I

I let Quirk out. She scampers around collecting abandoned shoes ordering them toe to heel in a queue for Urgent Care. Next, she casts her arms to net all the tumbled clothes, flicking them viciously, slapping the air with a crack. A memory stirs of a stinging cheek and I rouse. I hear Quirk say clearly, “Blue

I always thought I settled for less—for snatches. That first time when you asked if the devil looked like you, I kissed you as if I was Scarlet O’Hara. I let you think you had the wicked glint of Rhett Butler rather than the dull patina of poor old beige Ashleigh. It was the start