(These are excerpts--click on the title to view the whole piece!)

Another Incarnation
 
Inauguration Day always brings back those memories, as it was on that day in 1961 when I was incarcerated.  
 
Valentine Michael Smith

 

Wounds
 
Even by that age I'd met people crazy enough to cut the throat of a kid sitting quietly in a roomful of witnesses, and eighty-nine percent of me was sure she wasn't one of them. The other eleven percent didn't give a damn.  
 
Sherri Linn Kline

 

Laying on Hands
 
"J.J.'s pissed," four year-old Lily informs me. "He's making a big mess." I smile even broader if possible, thinking Physical Presence, Tone of Voice, Body Language. "Yeah," I agree, "Looks like he's mad all right."  
 
Kat McElroy

 

Lady of Fire
 
I was a teenager; I saw symbolism in everything, but I didn't look deeply enough. Take that pink photo album, always there on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. That album still held pictures of Uncle Norman's first wedding, his first wife. Once when my young cousin asked me who that lady was in the picture with her daddy, I hadn't known what to say. But Grandma knew. "That's Dotty," she said, and my cousin, disinterested, turned the page to the pictures of her own mother's wedding.  
 
Lisa Ohlen Harris

 

The Mannequin
 
At nine years of age, I had no idea that "potash" was nothing more than potassium hydroxide, a legitimate ingredient used in soaps, and not "pot ash," or the creatively recycled remnants of joints. For years now, I'd been watching my mother and her friends while they smoked, curious as to why I'd never seen anyone collecting the ash, but I'd never thought to ask about it.  
 
Victoria Marinelli