We were in the locker room getting ready when they came in with their offer. The team owner and three suits from the TV network. The first one said: “Triple the amount of your salary this season. Waiting for each of you in offshore accounts.” “Tax free,” said the second guy, “tax free.” All of us changing at our lockers turned to listen. 

With “The Momentum Issue,” Expanded Field is excited to present its fourth collage of words and images with a recurring leitmotif. The collection of creative works in this issue is the sum of a variety of themes and tensions we found in and among our submissions.

On a steep incline the houses seem to pour down the earth. Then they repeat again, from decline to peak; my bicycle takes me round and round and round. The sensation of sliding, as if to some inevitable conclusion.

It’s a death trap. Damn druggies, breaking the lock to count a pile of quarters they ripped off from the laundromat. The landlord will probably never fix this door.

We woke to the explosions and jumped on our bikes. Many of us were armed with nothing more than cardboard tubes, and rubber bands and paper clip ammo wiggled to mean barbs like our hearts.

Despite the dentist’s soporific
My imagination transformed
The street where I walked
Into a takeoff field

barely a month
into a new year
when God gave
us a clean start

As far back as her memory stretched, she was just one of many clustered around the fire. At first, the circle had been small, but, as she grew older, it widened to include all those who brought warmth into her life.

Much of life sounds like feet travelling up a staircase in a public or semi-public corridor. That might-be-coming-here noise. That maybe-it’s-for-me. That can’t concentrate expectant fear, trembling hand hovering between two interrupted once-connected actions murmur

It feels as though I will never catch up. Every time I see the news, a panel show, people playing instruments. Anyone being interviewed on the radio about anything. A name attached to an article. Casual sign-offs (by strangers) to emails.

2099 24 March Dear reader, You might be tempted to throw this manuscript into the fire. But for your own sake, please continue to read. I don’t exaggerate when I say that your life depends upon it. As for me, my life will be over soon enough. Or maybe it will be worse than over. As I type into the wall monitor before me, I leak

They said it was bad luck for a peacock’s feather to be winking at them as they moved into the house. They took it outside straight away and put it in the bin. But like old burial grounds and haunting ghosts, the fear of omens is usually a fear of personal failures.