Short Story | JOYLAND PUBLISHING

Kissing Frogs

Foster Dalmas -

Leonie was no longer surprised when frogs proposed to her. The first time happened when she was seven. Mama had sent her out to play...

The Two Brothers

Laura I. Miller -

Wolves are less brave than they seem. —Angela Carter I. Ruby inherited the dragon from her Uncle Pierce when he died. She’d seen the dragons advertised...

Solstice

Walker Rutter-Bowman -

A woman approached, pushing a stroller. I was on my way to teach my morning class. Without something as substantial as a stroller in...

Maps to Nowhere

Nara Vidal, translated from Portuguese by Emyr Humphreys -

How vast the human body, your human body, is. The nervous system sprawls like markings on a vast map of pleasure and affection. The things...

That Drowning Place

Morgan Thomas -

Driving north on the island road, they were mostly innocent. They’d done awful things, but the sort of awful that from a distance looks...

Skateland USA

Graham Irvin -

A lady down the street in my neighborhood kept a lion for a pet for a couple years. She had a tall fence around...

Story of Girl

Sarah Jane Cody -

The girl knows too much. The girl is only six, but to her mother her eyes appear old. It’s as if the girl stole her...

Survivors

Lauren Green -

Mason did not speak the entire ride home. He sat instead staring out the window, arms folded across his chest. It was the middle...

In Which the Writer Speaks to Her Literary Merit

Zoë Ruiz -

My literary merit is a tweet at 9:01 on Saturday night. No likes, zero RTs. The tweet is about goats. Saturn squares my Aquarius Moon and Venus...

Antipode

Amina Kayani -

A man comes in around 2:30 for an appointment I forgot to write down. He is slight, his back hunched like a misshapen hanger....