Category: Fiction

by Madeline Graham It is ninety-five degrees in July and the pool is packed. He stands on the staircase leading into the shallow end, no arm floaties on. We hope that he will be the next to join us.      There is the fat backside of an old man in trunks, popping through a too-small innertube floating…

by Madison Bakalar Sara first met Dillon at the Chinese restaurant down the block from her apartment. It was a quiet night, rainy. A Tuesday. The windows were greasy from customers perusing the daily specials pasted to the glass. She had seen him before on the street, in passing. He was sometimes on her train…

by Laura Leigh Morris When the baby’s mouth closes over her nipple, Irene goes from half asleep to painfully awake. The chapped cracks in her areola come alive, and she whimpers. The baby snarfles and gasps as he suckles, a hungry little thing.      Insatiable, Irene called him at his four-week-old appointment. The doctor nodded, said they…

by Jaydn DeWald Rolled out before us: a path of stain-resistant bronze. Tufted, hand-knotted, flat-woven, loomed. For walking across, bare- or sock-footed, holding a mug of warm milk. With viscose fringe. Geometric borders. Into which she would crush a tube of maroon lipstick. What patterns do you see? Map of sand dunes, map of riotous…

by Hemmy So Of all the vegetables in her garden, Mijin loved the perilla leaves best because they required so little from her. No trimming, no garden bed cover, no precise watering schedule. Just sunshine and enough water to quench their thirst, and they produced delicious bounty. She’d miss them when she left for Korea,…

by Dylan McNulty-Holmes The first time I hear about Blue, it’s on the news. There are interviews with survivors—mostly their silhouettes, filling anonymous rooms with their stories. One woman appears on national breakfast TV, baring her shiny tear-strewn face for all to see. She tells the sympathetically frowning hosts how she woke up in an…

by Michael Brooks  2005      When they saw no trace of my “inner artist,” I knew I was about to disappear—faster than Nightcrawler could teleport. Pops spent the spring digging through dumpsters and gluing trash collages together. And Ma? She poured clay over her belly to make plasters, fired them in the kiln, and then stuck ‘em…

by Francis Walsh As the hog reeve, I lived beside the town animal pound, and at night the breathing of the animals lulled me to sleep.      But one evening, the bell on the door of the pound startled me awake. I lit a candle and crept outside to find Goodman Willis crouched before the open door…

by Dinah Cox My next-door neighbor—Charlotte was her name—had four kids, five Labrador retrievers of various colors, and a small income she earned exclusively by delivering the morning newspaper in our neighborhood. She must have collected child support, too, though she never said anything about an ex-husband. In the afternoons, she listened to the police…

by Madeline Vosch I had gone to the café just to get out of the house. My apartment was carpeted, and when the sun hit at midday, the space got small and uninhabitable. I had just taken a shower, my hair leaving wet patches on my shirt. I was always a little bit of a…