Fiction

Country Music

Ryan D Matthews -

The garage smelled—mold and a dead mouse, I think. And Geoffrey. He was still going, over by the yellow light bulb, his corduroys sagging...

Keeping Things Alive is Too Much Work

Dina Del Bucchia -

Congratulations to Joyland contributor Dina Del Bucchia, whose first collection of fiction Don’t Tell Me What to Do is out now with Arsenal Pulp Press. In...

Triangle

Yxta Maya Murray -

To: undisclosed recipients From: Tricia Belter, M.A. Re: Triangle Date: April 12, 2016 One day, the artist Sanja Iveković performed a radical act of love. That is, she...

Before Security

Tom Pyun -

“Don’t come in here,” Wynn hollered from behind the stall door of the men’s bathroom at San Francisco International Airport. As he kneeled on...

Inverted

Joey Comeau -

Used to be I woke covered in blood. Chunks of strange men in my bed. I was an animal then. The darkness rode me...

Partnered

Emma Horwitz -

Are you Sappho, I ask the lesbian poet splayed in my sheets. Poetess, she corrects me, I’m still young. At ten, she rolls to...

Translated from the Portuguese by Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren Music Thursday rushed. Thursday traffic, bus, metro, Thursday watches where time moves faster: brief minutes. Contracted hours. Withered happiness...

Waterlines

Nikki Levine -

The block is quaint, polished, save the lake rats. Daphne and deergrass dot the walk and the yardcat’s front legs are short. She does...

The Nightmare Ballad of the Drunken Brand Identity

Jonathan Ball -

With a Cameo by Shakespeare and a Title that Cannot Get Worse The nightmare begins when you look at a gun. This is how it...

What Will Make It Last

Ashley Strosnider -

The banks of the Mississippi were as long and brown and green from the window of the restaurant as they were from the window...