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

Andromeda Among Asphodels, 2005 Cassiopeia Nix Oil on canvas In this work, the artist has painted a field of half-bloomed asphodels, flowers that crawl up their spear stems in the hyper-detail-rich style that has become her signature. The features of the flowers are sharp and minute. When viewed from a distance they become so myopic… Read More Andromeda Among Asphodels, 2005 ~ fiction by Spencer Nitkey

Siobhán picked me up from the apartment and drove us into Brooklyn. She sang along with Bowie’s “Golden Years” playing off her iPhone. She turned to face me as we barreled up Bedford Avenue near McCarren Park. “ANNNNGELLLLL.” “Oh, good fuckin’ Lord. Watch the street,” I said. She laughed. “I always keep one eye on… Read More Ourselves ~ fiction by Mike Lee

We come out at night to scurry from between the cracks in your foundation. We explore every crevice in search of crumbs, a warm place to rest, or to infest. We never go near the traps your husband placed in the corners, and though we would love to lick the peanut butter he positioned just… Read More We Are the Mice That Live in Your Basement ~ fiction by Sara Dobbie

Wednesday, May 11th, 11:30 I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice. You came highly recommended. It’s just … well, you won’t believe what’s happened. I almost didn’t believe it myself until she popped out. I call her Calvia—because she came from my calf muscle. And I’m not trying to look a gift horse, or… Read More Vestigial ~ fiction by Coleman Bigelow

I inspect floral enamel coating spoons and forks, hand-painted cherries across white porcelain, slices of slouching golden brioche like giant dominoes. I run my finger across the whetted blade. Yellow, uneven circles tumble on laminate. It’s a choice between reading Kafka or covering beech wood with glossy hortensias, poppies and bluebells. In eighteen minutes and… Read More The Not-So-Sudden Walk after Reading Kafka ~ fiction by Isabelle B.L

They descend in clattering droves, sag telephone lines, drip from the tulip tree like rotten fruit. You watch from the window, push your nose against the pane. Your mother tells you about a sudden spring snowstorm, about a speckled egg found on the doorstep. How she candled the shell and saw a sleeping girl tucked inside. Saw… Read More When the Cowbirds Come to Carry Your Sister Away ~ fiction by Audra Kerr Brown

Like a lot of people, I started experimenting with bugs in high school. My first time was at a party after homecoming sophomore year. A girl wearing her hair in a towering beehive do fluttered a baggie of monarchs the color of Halloween in front of me. Butterflies were no big deal, I figured. I cupped a… Read More Glow ~ fiction by Keith J. Powell

She calls from the top of the jungle gym. Look at me, look at me now. I’m feeding the baby mashed fruit from a tube and still only have two eyes. Sure, I say, as I try to squeeze just the right amount of yellow goop into his half-open mouth. Look at me now! She… Read More Look at me ~ fiction by Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri

Late one night, Becca gathered her supplies—flashlight, spackling knife, rubber spatula, shovel, and scalpel—and walked into the woods behind her house. The breeze rustled her black hair, and the tall trees waved back and forth as if to welcome her. Far in the woods, she found a spot she liked: desolate, and so dark it… Read More Scrape ~ fiction by Victoria Mack

The fourteen-year-old twins watched Doris in her push-up bra lipstick blot rouge pluck pencil thicken shape all the while listening to Mel Torme and talking nonstop to them about which of the boys she hoped would come to her table and ask permission from her date to dance and then she stood and danced and… Read More The Emerald Room Awaits ~ fiction by Paul Beckman

Edgar Rosenberg. Remember me? Joan Rivers, your wife, and partner for twenty-two years? The funny one? The one Carson loved? And Robert Mitchum. Yeah-yeah, cuckolding’s not nice. I’m not nice. You can’t get where I got with nice. Can you hear me? No, of course, you can’t hear me because you’re dead. Deader than my… Read More Can We Talk? ~ fiction by Lucinda Kempe

You will watch TV with Mrs. Beasley, sitting on her two-seat sofa, and it will not be dangerous. Your mother trusts her. You will play cards and checkers. You’ll draw dinosaurs. You’ll iron leaves in wax paper, and she’ll let you close your eyes and run your palm, warm and waxy over it, to feel… Read More Radio on the Fish Tank ~ fiction by Nancy Freund

You were eleven and I was twelve, Irish twins, and I was always telling you to come on, move faster, hurry up. I already felt so far behind the rest of the world. And there we were in summer exile at our grandmother’s house in Boring, Pennsylvania, a town with no mall, no movie theater,… Read More I’ll Be Your Mirror ~ fiction by Kathryn Kulpa

Riley says it’s five o’clock somewhere and that’s all I need to hear because that means he’s off on a tooty-toot-toot and that can happen any day at whatever o’clock but does it have to be an hour before my parents get here and last night’s dishes still a crusty mountain in the sink and… Read More Same Old, Same Old ~ fiction by Francine Witte