Poetry: On the Ribs by Alex Nakahira

Seventh grade. Mr. T writes orgasm / instead of organism on the board.

Creative Nonfiction: Even After I Found Out You Only Asked Me to Sign You in To My High School Dance So You Could Sell Drugs to Catholic Girls, I Still Liked You by Sara Dobbie

Some of it was true and some of it wasn’t.

She seemed insane and benign, and I realized she was beautiful.

To get to where you’re going you can go east on University.

The first time you get invited to a tailgate party, you’re sitting in biology class at East Carolina University, next to a big guy name Daryl.

I want to know where my food comes from but not where it’s been

The coldest winter he ever spent was actually a summer in San Francisco, where he got hypothermia, twice.

Our university keeps acquiring expensive stuff that it can’t accommodate.

But artists, and especially writers, can get caught by overthinking.

There is a comforting order to the repetition.