EAP: The Magazine Archive

by K J Kindling.

Arcadia

by definition

is a countryside

that’s believed

to be perfect

-a paradise.

It was the only word

I got right

on a fifth grade

vocab quiz.

I usually got every word right

but I was too distracted

by how much

I loved the word

Arcadia.

Momma was mad

and asked me what happened.

“Did you even try Megan?”

“Arcadia,” I tasted sugar when I said it.

“What?”

“That’s my name now.”

I told her so plainly

I was almost surprised

she looked surprised.

 

“Call me Arcadia.”

 

I must’ve tossed rain

back into the sky

her mouth hung open

so wide.

 

My parents thought it was

a stage and that

I would grow out of it-

 

But I grew into it instead.

 

by Clarinda Harriss. “Jesus, what’s this?” The cleaning lady’s niece holds up a largish, bright purple, semi-translucent object which she has just discovered in a pot of geraniums. Her aunt guffaws. “Brenda, Hon,that would be a dildo.” Then Vera realizes that Brenda doesn’t know what a dildo is. “It looks like a thing.” Brenda eyes […]

by Tony Whitehead and Phil Smith. No one kills an angel. Mandi Lyon changed that. Though it was never her intention to upset the balance of so many worlds on the morning she arrived back in the county of her birth. Raised by adoptive parents, from whom she had drifted away after college when work […]

by Chris Farago. I promise not to wander off without you. The woods are dark and odd and possibly full of elms, And I know how you hate elms, So I will take you by the hand, by the wrist, By whatever you need to be taken by to feel safe, And I will steer […]

by Stephen Mead. It’s simply complicated. The future is behind you. You are on an escalator standing backwards. Beneath you is the present & the past has your eyes. Seeing only these two, you feel the other exactly where your hands aren’t. I’ve forgotten the Greek phrase for this. My tongue is of the Sphinx, […]

by Bruce Thompson. There, there; everything will be all right. Or else it won’t. There are two kinds of lullabies. One kind promises a safe, beautiful world in which children are cherished and loved. Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry. Go to sleepy little baby. When you wake you shall have all the pretty little horses. The […]

by Tim J. Myers.   Once a poor family lived in a cottage near a forest. One day their landlady came and said, “There are too many people here!” “But we pay our rent!” the father protested. “Yes,” said the landlady, “but your new baby makes five of you. Either pay more money or leave!” […]

by K. Marvin Bruce. In the night she screams. I’m bathed in a cold sweat. Her night terrors began from the beginning. Rocky Grove College, 2005. Senior year. Can’t say how she caught my attention. I’m a sensible business major. My career will pay the bills. I see her at the Union. She looks desperate, […]

by Ron Singer. The dirty white spot was an irregular hexagon or heptagon about an inch-and-a-half in diameter, with jagged edges. It was located on the sidewalk directly in front of the door to my apartment building. I presume it had once been a facial tissue that fell from someone’s pocket as they reached for […]

by Rose Jermusyk. She had come so far already, left her beloved highlands in the old country, crossed an ocean hoping the grass really was greener. She went to church with neighbors who had come before her, but she was on her own. All alone and always in transit between her boarding room at the […]