I’ve been thinking about punctuated equilibrium. Just the name is cool. The theory is that not all evolution takes place slowly and incrementally. Sometimes a group from a larger population breaks off—maybe the group gets isolated because of a flood or something—and because the population is small, the individuals undergo rapid evolutionary change. When they’re […]
Fiction
Emma Smith-Stevens: The Boulevard
Kat took a faint bit of pleasure in dialing Mark’s number, a man whom she’d never met, from inside of his own home. She was lying on his loveseat, legs draped over its wooden arm. She wondered where he was, but knew she wouldn’t ask, and what he looked like, because there were no pictures […]
Elisabeth Geier: It’s the Mud, It’s the Mud
The summer the Mormons came to visit, my brothers and I took off before they had unpacked. The twins got my room. Uncle William took Mark and Andrew’s room at the end of the hall, with Ettie, his second Mormon wife. Second as in re-married, not additional. They weren’t that kind of Mormon. The kind […]
Christine Fadden: How We Stay Good Girls
I told my stepmother I was spending the night at Carla’s house and Carla told her parents she was spending the night at mine. Then we went with the boys up the mountain. The boys were brothers and—for a while—Carla and I were like sisters. Neither of us wanted to have sex, which is contrary […]
Jeffrey Colvin: Victuals
The teeth on the BSB-133 blade are induction heated, diamond crusted, sharpened to a flesh cutting five microns. When securing the ends of the blade to the spine of the hack saw, if you do not pay proper attention, nasty gashes sometimes happen. Bartholomew Evers (he knows the hazards) removes the blade from its cardboard […]
Kristin S. VanNamen: Winter Ice and The Mexican
Margaret Thompson tells her boyfriend Bill he needs a costume for Thanksgiving. “It’s a family tradition.”