The West | JOYLAND PUBLISHING

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,...

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...

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...

Beacon

Henry Hoke -

The day before the day before I bought the shirt I thought about buying the shirt. The day before I bought...

We Were Professionals

Benito Vergara -

It's my first desert ever and I'm disappointed. I was hoping for untrodden movie dunes scalloped by the wind, my shoes eagerly filling with sand. I...

Sustenance

Diana Wagman -

There were bits of dead fairies in Aunt Lila’s phlegm. She coughed up streaks of pink and lavender and pale baby blue. Pieces of bony...

A Space Cowgirl’s Book of Comfort Food Recipes

J.A. Pak -

Forward Ladies, do not go out with a journalist. And if you do and that journalist gets hired to head the Outer Hebrides bureau and he...

Parts of Us

Emory Harkins -

We watch men in sweaters shoot guns. They’re in their sixties, lined up hip to hip, crotches of pleated slacks pressed firm to the firing...

The End Is The Beginning

Wendy C. Ortiz -

The small round kitchen table was the desert and their hands were still upon it. Marge looked at her daughter’s eyes, the blue eyes she’d...

The Blood-Sex Iconostasis

Jasper Nighthawk -

Night falls over town. The fog doesn’t recede. Sodium lights flicker to life. Some hold steady; others strobe on and off in lugubrious, neurotic cycles....