“Counting Backwards” by Caroline Bock

10. If you can count backwards from 10, you are not drunk . . .

“MegaBlast” by R.K. Solomon

I’m not a complete monster. It pains me to hear her beg for her life. She says she’s got two kids. Little kids. A boy and a girl. Maybe she does. Maybe not. People will say anything in these situations. I wish she’d shut up. This is hard enough without the hysterics . . .

“No Doors” by Lisa Martens

When I was eight years old, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. The Dallas school district saw I was brown, so they stuck me in ESL classes with the other brown children.

The actual problem was that I was having over a hundred minor seizures per day . . .

“We Burned Down the City” by Jervey Tervalon

Gumbo and I tossed a Frisbee, waiting for our mamas to call us in for dinner, while Danny, another one of my brothers’ friends, screamed by from one end of the block to the other, passing within a few feet of us on his gigantic chopper . . .

“Luxury” by Louise Wareham Leonard

And in all the feeding of fine foods . . .

“The Peyote Factory” by Jonathan Santlofer

I always told myself that I’d never use anything stronger than pot. I was a middle class kid away from home, NYU, my second year of art school, and hard drugs scared the shit out of me. But pot, I loved it. I smoked in the morning, afternoon and night. I’d go to school stoned, paint stoned, fuck stoned. It was 1970 and I was living on Avenue C. It looked like the set for an end of the world movie: deserted tenements, bums, hustlers, junkies and pushers on every corner . . .