The Northeast | JOYLAND PUBLISHING

What Happened

Sarah Bridgins -

I was thirteen when my grandmother told me about my mom’s rape. We were sitting at the dining room table at my grandmother’s house playing...

Please Hold

Peter Kispert -

The photo hangs crooked. Like this. I can barely hear Sal call “Action!” over the wind, brown leaves turning up and scattering downhill. It is the...

Good in a Room

Duncan Birmingham -

My jokes fall flat. I’m flailing in the room and have been for weeks, maybe months. My one-liners are stepped on. My blows don’t land and...

Paul Mackie Was Here

Lisa Taddeo -

At Milton Academy, this shit-ass boarding school I went to up in Milton, there was a kid named Paul Mackie. Richard and my mom...

Paris with Mandy

Marcy Dermansky -

Rachel came home for her summer break with a dog, a standard poodle. I had just put down my dog. She was sixteen, my sweet...

Chinatown of My Dreams

Bonnie Chau -

“...according to the myth it is a town that has existed in many different parts of the world in many different time periods…” This is what...

Ada, or When It Was Safe to Stay Dark

David Burr Gerrard -

“Ada was transformed into a sort of graceful computing machine, endowed, moreover, with phenomenal luck...”—Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor “Ada is a complex computer algorithm...

Invisible Woman

Michelle Sierra Laffitte -

My eyes follow the grape-sized snowflakes that tumble on the red sandstone of the Washington Place townhouses, on Dorsey Park’s Christmas spruce tree, and on the...

Gling Gling Gling

Bud Smith -

A woman tapped the cartoon cherries and teal diamonds on the cellphone screen as she steered through town with her knee. The game went ...

Silence Turned to Music

Ashley P. Taylor -

One. Alone. She Stood alone. With Music, yes. But Really all by her self. Alone. Be- gan to play the Harsh chords that Begged help me Out. Beat one was a...