“Memphis” by Robert R. Moss

Parnham tells me to come downtown. I stop to get cigarettes. On the shelf behind the cashier are brown paper bags of nuts. I buy one, then continue on to Central and park my car across from the courthouse.
 . . .

“The Descent of Man and Everyone Else” by John Streamas

I was one of Descent.com’s earliest customers, and surely I was first to inquire into a gap. It was only three generations into the future, this gap . . .

“On or Off This Island” by Robert Arellano

My grandmother Fefita sits for la cena while my great-grandmother Maria Antonia cautions her on the caprices of obstetrics. Fefita is six months pregnant with her first child, my aunt Juana.

“The crying is horrible,” Doña Maria Antonia counsels her fresh-faced daughter-in-law, “but the silence is far worse.”

“Theory/Practice” by Adam Mansbach

At the risk of coming off like a complete fucking asshole as usual, I would like to use this space to address a common misconception about parenthood . . .

“Bar Guerrero” by Cecilia Fulton

I can’t get out of my seat belt fast enough. . . .

“The Great Fire of Galway” by Seamus Scanlon

My brother Sid was a fire starter who started early. He was twelve. He was precocious. He was an igniter atrocious. He was a pyromaniac poet laureate . . .

“Adela, My Mother and the Young Lizard Catcher” by Kristen Petry

Adela sits at her desk in the Kingston parliament building, which looks like a Moorish palace. . .

“Mother of the Year” by Susan Pohlman

My son, Matthew, didn’t go through the Terrible Twos until he was three.