Fiction

Lucky Frank

Jenny Xie -

My parents, who had all day nursed an injured silence between them, united to teach me a lesson. I had lost my miniature koala bear,...

Kindling

Kerry Cullen -

I am collecting mothers. Mothers with loose blonde hair and glossy mouths, mothers with dark bobs and plum lipstick and freckles scattered across pale faces, mothers...

The Soft No

Kimberly King Parsons -

Days this hot belong to us. See us run both sides of this street, every lawn our lawn. We are sprinkler kids, shoeless and soaked...

Skywalker from Belgium

Jonathan Crowl -

Eight years later, Janne comes to America. She emails an old account: Is three weeks notice enough? I say I left Seattle, I’m back...

An Aesthetics of Rat Bites

Stacy Hardy -

Always, I am overcome by their beauty. My lungs tighten in my chest and the color of my blood brightens. I run my hands over...

Far Gone Conclusions

Hilary Leichter -

On the last night of the revolution someone somewhere was making soup, and for them, the people who ate the soup, that was the end...

Heart Lake

Rudrapriya Rathore -

The police told us it wasn’t our fault. They gathered us up, all of us except Jonathan, and put us in a little room off...

Ron Eight

John Jodzio -

My first husband was an inventor named Ron Buck and my second husband was his invention, Ron Eight. In the beginning, some of my...

Phantom Vibrate

Clare Sestanovich -

He picked up his daughter at the winter formal. Grace was in the seventh grade, and for weeks had been gnawing the skin around her...

The Single Friend

Katie M. Flynn -

She couldn’t swim. It was a reason to stay away from the river, to stay in San Francisco—no one swam there. Sitting on the edge of...