Counting Steps

or, How to Live Like an Animal

The sidewalks in our neighborhood are crowded despite the cold because the experts have told us a blizzard is coming after midnight. The computer models predict a foot of snow, or maybe two, who can say, and everyone in New York City is stockpiling milk, bread, and wine because they won’t dare to venture outside tomorrow. The lone exception to this rule will be people like me. One fo...

Hands

I was 16 when Barty Robbins told me I needed to relax. 

“Tommy,” Barty said. “You’re anxious, and you’re thinking way too much.”

He climbed into the batting cage opposite me.

“And your hands, they’re dragging.”

He paused, and I shifted my weight back and forth.

“You’re anxious,” he repeated. “And that’s making your hands drag through the zone. They’re way too slow.”

He stepped back out of the cage.

“Just relax.”

Later, Barty play...

A Recipe for Drinking Life to the Lees

after Tennyson’s “Ulysses”

Wait until after two a.m. to start cooking.

After work, after you and Jax have a few rounds of pineapple rum and sour beers at The Local. After you see Cassandra there, the flesh of her forearm tender-fresh with a tattooed cactus.

After the barman calls last call, sense with a wet fingertip a subtle shift in the headwinds.

Wade from ankle- to waist-deep the summerly...

Originally from Arkansas, Charles Green teaches writing at Cornell University. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New England Review, Salt Hill, and Tar River Poetry, among other venues.

Green's nonfiction, “Against Sayings,” was originally published in The Southeast Review Volume 34.2.

Against Sayings

There may be nothing new under the sun, but that doesn’t mean we’ve seen or said it all.

Humans see three primary c...

Ashley Caveda received her MFA from The Ohio State University. Her writing has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Ruminate Magazine, and the Southeast Review. She works at Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic in Indianapolis, telling the stories of others through video production, blogging, and podcasting. Currently, she is writing a YA science fiction novel about a young woman with a disability.

Caveda's nonfiction, “Hail Able Bodies,”...

Brandon Lingle's work has appeared in various publications including The American Scholar, Guernica, The Normal School, The North American Review, and New York Times At War. He edits nonfiction for War, Literature, and the Arts. Views are his own. "Tourniquet" was a notable in The Best American Essays 2016.

Lingle's nonfiction, “Tourniquet,” was originally published in The Southeast Review Volume 33.2.

Tourniquet

...

Jennifer M. Colatosti lives in Pine Lake, Georgia. She is Assistant Professor of English at Perimeter College at Georgia State University, where she co-chairs the Revival: Lost Southern Voices literary festival. Her fiction and nonfiction have also appeared in The MacGuffin, Sequestrum, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, The Intentional, and Midwestern Gothic.

Colatosti's nonfiction, “Revolution,” was originally published i...

Sari Boren’s essays have been published in Copper Nickel, Lilith Magazine, Alimentum, Hobart, and Pangyrus, among others. She teaches creative nonfiction at Grub Street and co-manages Boston’s Four Stories reading series. Sari is also a museum exhibit developer who’s written exhibit text for dozens of museums across the country. Read more at: sariboren.com

Boren's nonfiction, “Something Like That. Like Nothing,” was originally...

Lareign Ward’s work has appeared in Electric Literature, The Mary Sue, Under the Gum Tree, and elsewhere. She’s a Texas native who currently lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Ward's nonfiction, “Two Boyfriends,” was originally published in The Southeast Review Volume 35.2 .

Two Boyfriends

I have both a live boyfriend and a dead boyfriend. 

I don’t see much of either one these days. 

The live one lives two-and-a-half hours away, inclu...

Alysia Sawchyn currently lives in Northern Virginia. She is a nonfiction editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection, and her writing has appeared in Fourth Genre, Barrelhouse, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. 

Sawchyn's nonfiction, “Phone Sex, Revisited,” was originally published in The Southeast Review Volume 35.2 and was one of our 2017 Pushcart nominees for the 2018 Pushcart anthology.

Phone Sex, Revisited

I don’t often talk abou...