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Family and Relationships

Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

The End Of The World

Maybe the end of the world wasn’t fire and explosions and lawlessness and bodies in the streets. Maybe the end of the world was some smaller thing.

By Richard Scott Larson February 2023
Poetry

The Patron Saint Of Traffic Lights

My child is in the backseat with her mother / and can’t understand what’s happening, / keeps forgetting we’ve already told her / that she fainted and hit her head hard / on our living room’s stone floor

By James Davis May February 2023
Poetry

Ode To My Brother’s Face Tattoos

At twenty you’ve managed to erase / our dad’s face from your own, / blacked out his sharp cheekbones / with roses, marked each eyelid / with an upside-down cross to distract / from his glossy brown irises.

By Reese Menefee February 2023
The Dog-Eared Page

The Blue Devils Of Blue River Avenue

My mother didn’t like my going over to the Sambeauxs’. There was something mysterious and menacing about that house: a bloodcurdling scream, a silhouette of a knife in the window, a wolf on its hind legs with a leather tail scuffling along behind the juniper trees.

By Poe Ballantine February 2023
Readers Write

Drug Experiences

Mushrooms in the desert, pot on a family vacation, black hash on a nuclear submarine

By Our Readers February 2023
Poetry

Selected Poems

My son and I are sitting on his back porch, / early October, the gold locust leaves above his barn / giving the morning light something to shine in. / An unfelt breeze makes itself known / when the leaflets shake and shimmer.

from “The Last Day, Again”

By Robert Cording February 2023
Fiction

The Den Mother Has Her Say

Before we eat our snow cones, pet this dog. Don’t expect to earn a Wolf badge for your troubles. . . . Move slowly down the back, like you’re taking your fingers on a trip, until you get to the bulge on the haunch. Yes, it’s a tumor. Yes, it’s cancerous. Pet it like it’s nothing special, just part of the dog.

By Lance Larsen February 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Captain’s Log

7:17 — Wife yells, Oh, God, look! Dusk now, harder to see. What? I say. Bear! she says. To right, where riverbank gives way to pasture, large beast lurks in shadow of tree. Dark, terrible beast, now moving slightly toward us. Large, dark beast says, Moooo.

By Andrew Johnson February 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Sins Of The Mother

Although I still identify as a Christian, I am endlessly unpacking and discarding the church teachings of my childhood. My belief in God is no longer built on the fear of what will happen to me after I die.

By Anna Gazmarian January 2023
Announcements

This Month In Sun History

Our 50th Year Of Publication

Although The Sun had already released three books of material from its pages, The Mysterious Life of the Heart, released in February 2009, was the first to be centered on a theme: romantic love.

By The Sun January 2023