
OUR LADY COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED by Diana Kole
I watched a moth crawl toward me on the concrete. One of its wings was damaged; I had a strong impulse to crush it with my boot.

I watched a moth crawl toward me on the concrete. One of its wings was damaged; I had a strong impulse to crush it with my boot.

Killing a shark is always personal. The shark ate your wife. The shark ate your son.

Writers who seem to want to write a commercial screenplay in prose strike me as the least interesting sort. The same goes for all attempts at translating cinematic terminology to prose.

There hadn’t been this much excitement since the boys came home from war with their uniforms and their little triangular hats. They’d been shipped off again.

I pull up hard and dredge out a congealed braid of hair the length of an arm. Horrified, I keep pulling and it just keeps coming.


My mother is bursting at the seams and I am watching her stitching begin to give.

For now he made his home in men. Or rather, for a time, they lodged in him while he saved up seed money.

Have fun. Be yourself. All that live free Target store bullshit. But it’s true.

For one heartbeat, I wanted it to be true. I wanted to see my own father facedown on the tile, spattered in his own blood.