A. Igoni Barrett's "My Smelling Mouth Problem" brings together a Nigerian traffic jam, popular music, and a bad case of halitosis to tell a lively story about personal and cultural independence.

As a young girl faces the break-up of her home town, she confronts a larger tragedy in her own family. The competing forces of dissolution and re-collection meet in journalist and fiction writer Leslie Schultz's short story "Drowning".

Pennsylvania writer Jamye Shelleby's short story "Twenty Five" contemplates the metaphysics of loss through a brother-sister relationship remembered through markers in time.

In Newbury College professor Aaron Tillman's "Heeding Doctor Eisner," an over-analyzing academic comes undone as he clings to sociological theory and to questionable sources of advice in the figures of his boss, his student, and his fellow commuters.

Who better to read aloud Kenneth Grahame's famous passage about the delight of "messing about in boats" than the rowers and staff at Boston's Community Rowing, Inc.? The Drum stopped by the boathouse early one morning last week and found a group of willing--and even enthusiastic--participants just coming off the water. Community Rowing is one of the largest public boat clubs in the United States, introducing people of all ages and all abilities to the sport of rowing. Visit their website for more info.

Allison Williams’ “Snake” finds two children playing in a muddy yard. Their game turns to a scuffle made dangerous when their father returns, sure to be angry at the mess they’ve made. Williams’ brief piece offers an intense study of the blurred line between protection and harm.

Three narrators take the listener through a range of responses to American culture. A Bolivian tour guide, a Taiwanese businesswoman, and a young Palestinian give us three perspectives on America’s relations with the world, all of them with a hamburger at the core of the story.

In Tara Masih’s “Haunt of Memory,” the narrator describes how he prunes the spirit tress of his blind friend Phineas to keep the bad spirits and memories away from his home. This short piece captures the beauty of the trees and of the friendship, and evokes an old man’s hard life on the edge of twilight.

The female narrator of Pete Smith’s “Testimony” tells the story of an affair that starts with a cloud of drinks and ends in the mystery of not knowing a partner. Smith explores the ways in which a self can become lost between a past and a present, youth and maturity--and intoxicating drinks and an even more intoxicating partner.

In his essay “Tickle or Torture,” Vestal McIntyre recounts his Wednesday-night teasings as the youngest of seven in an Idaho town. While his parents are attending Bible study, McIntyre is poked, prodded, tickled, and tortured by his siblings, although all he really desires is to be left alone.