Bad Apple

By Michael SingletonMay 1, 2026

I-10 into Houston on a Monday morning, and traffic doesn’t stop so much as give up. Just lies down and dies like a tired old horse. Sixty-five to zero in a blink, brake lights stacking up until the whole interstate looks like a busted Christmas parade. My CB comes alive. “This is Bad Apple, eastbound at the 7-5-3, and we are officially parked, boys.” That voice, hell, it was a velvet hammer. Smooth whiskey drawl, late-night DJ warmth, the kind of voice that makes you picture a man who’s seen some shit and decided to laugh at all of it. I liked him instantly. “Anybody know what we got up ahead?” Same old reports. Wreck at the 756. Maybe a fatal. Maybe an hour. Maybe three. Truckers start bartering routes, 610, surface streets, or just sit tight and bleed logbook hours into the Houston humidity. Bad Apple’s in the mix like he’s been there the whole time, easy, friendly, tossing advice, catching some back. Then the air settles into that particular silence truckers know too well: the dead time. Nothing to say, nothing to do but idle and sweat. And that’s when he starts singing. No warning. No “y’all listen […]

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The Old West End

With a vein of Lucille Clifton’s “In the Inner City” Our mothers left for work before we woke for school in Toledo in 1975 and our fathers left us latchkeys on the windowsill or under the mat in the inner part of the screen door. Our city was marked by demarcation zones of avenues. We were the kids of Collingwood Ave. Your block was your judge. We weren’t like hard city kids scared of the real ghetto kids past Delaware Ave. We were mostly Black, some white like me with a Black stepdad—call it survival how we made our tribe. So many fathers had it brutal, burned hands and mandatory overtime shifts at the glass factories, barely home to scold their children. Mothers were teachers and nurses, students, or teachers’ aids. Some worked at the factories too. We weren’t poor. None of us said the word poor. But think free lunch. Think government cheese, think a few white kids in class like “salt sprinkled in a lot of pepper,” Ms. Robinson joked. Ms. Robinson, who taught second grade at Fulton school and lived on the corner of Melrose. Hand-me-downs. We were hand-me-down kids, passed from uncles, aunts, and neighbors as […]

Sean Thomas DoughertyJan 13, 2026

Brevity Magazine

A Normal Couple

Sometimes I think he’s better … and then we’re out to eat and the coughing begins and I forgot—he forgot, we forgot—an inhaler (which bag was it in??) and then the looks from the other diners start and I swear he’s not dying and I’m not a bad wife for sitting here unconcerned as he runs to the bathroom—I’m a tired wife I’m a we’ve-been-here-before wife I’m a we-should-know-better wife because this is part of our normal, and sometimes things like lettuce are incompatible with my husband’s ability to breathe and sometimes I’m incompatible with my husband’s ability to breathe and I look like a lonely wife, a sad wife, an in-over-her-head wife, an ungrateful wife, a haughty wife as I sit and look at my phone in the booth while he’s off regurgitating part of his meal. Wife wife wife Right now I exist only in relation to him and his inability to eat a $10 burger without asphyxiating and whose responsibility is it—really—to make sure he remembers lettuce can be a problem, and what does the term “care partner” even mean when he’s able to make medical decisions, dietary choices on his own but I fill out the […]

Liz SauchelliJan 13, 2026

Brevity Magazine

About the Artist: Michael Todd Cohen

ON PERMANENCE Staghorn sumac, pokeberry and goldenrod were foraged from along the Long Island Sound, on the acre of land the paintings were made on; the rest from nearby sources, including a farmers’ market. Rendered on Eaton’s Berkshire typewriter paper with a “high permanency feature,” these pigments will nonetheless fade, reflecting the ever-changing landscape from which they came. On or near this acre on August 7, 1797 a fifteen-year-old enslaved Black girl named Minto was murdered. ON PERMANENCE imagines the possibilities of light she was not permitted to see on the morning of August 8, 1797. Sources: [1] Records of the Judicial Department Papers by Subject. Index to Inquests of Connecticut Deaths, 1711-1892. [2] Orcutt, Samuel, 1824-1893. A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut. [New Haven, Conn.: Press of Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor], 1886, p. 426. ABOUT THE ARTIST Michael Todd Cohen (aka saltpeter) is a queer writer, artist and adoptee living in New England. He stewards lordship house, a private home with public programs to celebrate and serve the literary community. You can learn more about the artist and his work at michaeltoddcohen.com.

DintyJan 13, 2026

Brevity Magazine

Issue 82 / Spring 2026

Issue 82 features essays by Angela Edward, Ann MacDonald, Brenda Miller, Emily W. Blacker, Erin Wood, Hea-Ream Lee, Karissa Nevada, L.F. Khouri, Michael Singleton, Noel Thistle Tague, Sara Daniels, and T.C. Martin.

DintyMay 1, 2026

Brevity Magazine

Teaching with Brevity

Our TEACHING RESOURCES section (found in our top menu) offers a powerful collection of resources for writers and teachers of literary nonfiction, including prompts, craft essays, subject and craft element indexes, teaching tools, and much more.

DintyMay 1, 2026

Brevity Magazine

About the Artist: Sherry Shahan

Sherry Shahan started ballet at 40, and pole dancing at 75, which seems sort of silly. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prizes (Poetry and Short Fiction) and Best American Short Stories. Her art appears in Rattle, Santa Fe Literary Journal, Wisconsin Review, Harbor Review, Progenitor Art & Literary Journal, Mud Season Review, and elsewhere. Artist Statement: I’ve wandered the globe as a travel journalist and photographer for decades, watching the world and its people from behind; whether in the hub of London, a backstreet in Havana, or alone from a window in a squat hotel room in Paris; whether with a 35 mm camera or an iPhone. These images reflect my passion for macrophotography, which makes my subjects appear larger than their actual size.

Zoë BossiereMay 1, 2026

Bad Apple

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The Old West End

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About the Artist: Michael Todd Cohen

Issue 82 / Spring 2026

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