Salvages - Gabrielle Hovendon

You can smell and hear and feel the clanking, grinding, clicking of the copper then brass then soda cans then everyday leftover household items Bird's mom with her "wrists as thin as wire" pilfers from what I imagine are abandoned or foreclosed homes in the outskirts of New Orleans. Bird cuddles these items in the backseat of her mom's car while hiding under a blanket from the red and blue lights until, one day, she ends up in a foster home. 

Hovendon's story is musical, energetic, and agile: it balances leaps of time and evokes the fragile, dangerous chaos of her life using spare details and the somersaulting sound-senses of rough metal clinking and clanging.

Click here to read the whole story published in WhiskeyPaper. 

Matthew Di Paoli - Other Forms of Life

In "Other Forms of Life," a grandfather and a grandson search for the answer to the mystery of how a bag full of bloody dear tails wound up on the grandfather's doorstep. As someone who's recently lost a grandfather, the pedestrian simplicity of this grandfather/grandson's search (they wait in line, stand on sideways, talk with the drycleaner) -- and its lack of a fulfilling conclusion for the grandfather -- pulled at my heartstrings.  

Read the full story at Carte Blanche.