No one knows when the baby crawled back to the door and started putting footwear in his mouth again. He’s teething, someone said, they have an urge to do that. A girl ran to inform the mother, who came rushing, stop, she said, I’ve said before, stop. The baby cried, thick tears in his round,… Read More Chewing Slippers ~ fiction by Tara Isabel Zambrano

Follow Ros to the party house, where colored lights churn from the windows into the night sky like a collapsing star. Let her grab your hand, weave you through swaying crowds into a room containing every other person on earth, living, dead, or otherwise. Dance with ghosts. Watch Ros dance. While you dance, close your… Read More Afterparty ~ fiction by Chelsea Bouchard

Safety Bucket Days after the latest headline, the school supplied each room with a safety bucket. Ms. Stevens removed each item one-by-one in front of the reverent class. There was a length of paracord to tie off the door and make a second lock if the first didn’t hold or a window was smashed to… Read More Safety Bucket ~ fiction by Aaron Sandberg

Octavia’s future arrives in a box small enough to fit in her coat pocket. She removes the plastic wrap, careful to tug the scared furball out of its package without getting scratched. Warming the tiny creature in the palm of her hand, she whispers “you’re home” as instructed by the Owner’s Manual. At the sound… Read More Buyer Beware ~ fiction by Phebe Jewell

A Wild Heart She is turning into a cat that offers dead mice to its owners. Her chat window with him is a one-sided list of songs and sentences from books he will never read. She is turning into a penguin that offers stones to its partner. She sends him a list of cities, of… Read More A Wild Heart ~ poetry by Shikha Valsalan

Rub your eye stye all over his face towels. Drool on his pillows. Dream of wrapping his head in cellophane. Lower sunglasses on your aquiline nose and stare with disdain at his beach potbelly. Tsk out loud. Offer no praise. Stay unadorned and scratchy. Leave your unpainted nails (toe and finger) raggy and unfiled. Lick… Read More Gracious Departure ~ fiction by Nancy Ford Dugan

In the third month of our relationship, we attend a Bonnard exhibition. There is a feeling that the exhibition might go on forever; one room of artwork endlessly spilling into another. I have a thought that our relationship could be like that, with no sense of an ending, just a series of experiences tumbling into… Read More You Never Know Which Artwork Will Stay with You, Becoming Entirely Beloved, Entirely Necessary ~ fiction by Sumitra Singam

Slash for Captain Marvel #15 그녀의 문제는 그녀의 목욕 내부를 두 번. One candle flickers beside the bed. 그녀는 자신의 성기에 반지를 넣어. I put the box on the table. 그녀는 저지대 내 슬래시을 공부했다. Improvements were made to my shoe. 우리는 꿀벌, 일부 그물과 케이크와 함께 제공되었다. I am surprised to see a nice shine on her skin. 그녀는 하늘에서 깃털의 몸을 좋아하지 않았다. I interfere with feathers in her lap.   Zombie Game                         This is a zombie game.… Read More Two Poems ~ poetry by Glen Armstrong

She stares across the desk at me in a way that makes me feel naked. I button my cardigan right up to the top. “Look,” she says, “It’s either this or the call centre. You’ll be sanctioned if you turn down a job that’s offered to you.” I shiver, despite the buttoned-up cardi. I worked… Read More It’s Either This Or The Call Centre ~ fiction by Alison Wassell

What’s your child’s name? What grade is she in? What’s her daily routine? Does she brush her teeth every morning? Does she cry every night? What school does she go to?  How are her grades? Have you observed behavioral changes? Does she startle at small noises? Flinch when classmates raise hands? Drop her books at… Read More Questions The Caseworker Should Have Asked After My Ex Accused Me of Neglect ~ fiction by Barbara Diggs

The flat is a box of green light. Leaves and stems and tendrils tumble from the ceiling, snake along surfaces, shoot up from the floor. In the corner of the room a glass cabinet hums softly, glows with a dim white light. The surfaces are jewelled with beads of condensation and furred with moss. Carnivorous… Read More A Lifetime’s Collection of Indoor Plants ~ fiction by Karen Arnold

Henry David is thinking about Mrs. Emerson and playing with himself as he surveys his beans. He wants to sojourn into and out of and into and out of Lidian in an act of carnal transcendence but he has beans to tend, ants to watch, an image to maintain. The Dial is expecting another travelogue… Read More Its Meanness to the World ~ fiction by Jon Doughboy

Simona is a mountain. She is tall. She speaks with an accent. Where are you from, Simona? I am the daughter of continental plates. My parents argued when I was born. I fled the desert to go to school. The children laugh. There’s distant thunder. Simona writes an essay. What do you want, Simona? I… Read More Lesson One: Simona ~ fiction by Kati Bumbera

Standing, Sylvie is ten feet tall, but the photographer wants her seated on her front step, back pressed into the lintel of the doorframe. Sylvie’s limbs are taut as the handles of an overused carrier bag, and creak like trees in a storm. “Does it hurt when your muscles lengthen, when your bones elongate?” the… Read More Like Trees in a Storm ~ fiction by Anika Carpenter

Day 1: I’ve been secretly studying my neighbors, especially the elderly couple across the street. According to middle class standards, the couple lives in squalor. Their ranch-style home is overgrown with wild grass and weeds. The Salvadoran kiddos next door sneak over and hunt on their lawn for snakes and cats to keep as pets.… Read More I Will Try Harder Tomorrow ~ fiction by Thomas Van Street

Seventeen. Borrowed loafers, tie too long. Shirt, hanging from his wiry frame, mustache trimmed, mouth wide. Counting, as he was taught. Pack up all my care and woe—. To the beat. It’s not one two three four, but one two-and-three four-and-one. Don’t think, listen, and become part of it. Transcend what you think, or know,… Read More Blackbird ~ fiction by Wayne Mok

Three grackles appear to me and as they stare it is impossible to look away, transfixed (transluced) (transpired) by this encounter as though they have something to prove, a message to pass on and I cannot begin to understand the five questions (who) (what) (when) (where) (why) even as I should have at least some… Read More When the Forecast Forgets the Wildfires ~ fiction by Audrey T. Carroll

The explosion of brass, a tsunami: paintbrush bristles staining skin, tickling eardrums; a titanium mass soaring skyward, blocking, encompassing all auditorial perception, absent peripherals, reverberating metallic and hollow; a traffic jam at all four corners of the bedroom, the precipice of a gasp, a ceiling’s pull at the sternum, unrelenting; dive bombers; controlled demolition; uncontrolled… Read More The Myopic Ideation of Frank Shishido ~ fiction by Henry Knollenberg

A man was found with a beating heart at the busy intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue on Tuesday. Authorities arrived on the scene at quite an ordinary time of day and found the man shouting, I’m alive! I’m alive! The man was taken to the hospital, where he was determined to be… Read More Reservoir ~ fiction by Suzanne Hicks

FIFTH So Avery plays the Serenelli, her shoulders bobbing, floating around the living room, hovering over the couch and the TV, up over the roofs of the terraced houses, through the schoolyard, soaring, fluttering, down the slide and between swing set chains. Through the tire in the backyard and then back in. Another tooth pops… Read More Avery and Jacob ~ fiction by Perry Genovesi

Take the loot from the Saturday night knockover and lock it in the box; wash the stash on Sundays at the track and glom a little for yourself and stuff it into the mattress; never leave the house without one of the fellas; fry up eggs in butter, not oleo, and make a lot more… Read More Moll (After Kincaid) ~ fiction by Richie Narvaez