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

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

The bandoneón grinds out a sultry Piazzolla tune, and Consuela chassés across the dance floor in leather evening gloves and smoky Chanel sunglasses, like she’s forbidden fruit. We swoon along the back wall, expanding and contracting in our Amish pencil skirts and Mary-jane slippers, studying her every move. Our parents willing us home before curfew.… Read More Forbidden Fruit ~ fiction by Karen Schauber

30th March 1997: Around a thousand days left until the end of a thousand years. More pressingly, just two hours and forty-seven minutes for Clayton to crack the code. On the face of it, the atmosphere in the conservatory of 30 Lowfield Gardens was more placid than a month of Easter Sundays; for the four… Read More Straight In ~ fiction by Aaron Becker

It’s midnight at the Double Bubble and I’ve finally made it to the spin cycle. Now that the eleven loads are clean, they are transformed from a monumental failure in hygiene to an accomplishment. In a corner the attendant is leaning against a counter reading a waterlogged copy of Dante’s Inferno while a fly bothers… Read More Centaurs in the Laundromat ~ fiction by Lynn Mundell

“It’s a gift,” my mother said, when I told her about how my feet were turning into crow’s feet. “And anyway, dear, not a crow. Blackbird feet.” “What’s the difference?” I asked, but my mother was onto other topics. She gets that way. Her whole life is a vanilla dream state these days. The doctors… Read More Migration Is a Survival Instinct ~ fiction by Epiphany Ferrell

You’re on Instagram again, late at night, scrolling past a sponsored post for an Atlantic article about thanking one’s partner. You’re split at the seams after cooking for your boyfriend and his friends yesterday during the soccer game. He didn’t even ask you beforehand, just assumed you’d whip something up. LA Galaxy won. You smiled… Read More How to Vanquish the Demon Raktabīja ~ fiction by Emily Hoover