Cheryl Pappas
I met you there
and I’m after the impossible place, the blank place, the place before I saw you, before you cast your eyes over me at the seaside feast table, where I was only because my rich sister told me I should get out more, before you…
Andrew Bertaina
Dutch Golden Age
He was saying to his daughter, now fourteen, now in the throes of things he didn’t want to write in essays, that the clouds were stunning as they floated across a deep blue sky. She said that the clouds were marvelous, stunning really, though she rarely noticed them…
Elena Zhang
Ghost Nebula
On the night your space shuttle launches, I walk outside to my backyard and tilt my head heavenward. I imagine seeing the stellar nurseries glowing pink and red, pulsing with newborn stars, as heavy as my love for you, as weightless as your nebulous body will soon be…
Elaine Maguire O’Connor
Snapped
Sage said I’m after messin’ everything up and that there’s rumours going round that the dead husband is somehow my fault. Fuck off yeh old crone, I says to her, and she shrunk down ‘cause she’s not used to me answering back like that…
Fergus Sinnott
The Other Room
And there they go again, the voices in the other room. She cannot say that she has grown accustomed to them. In fact, she cannot say much of anything. As of yet, the other room is one into which she is not permitted…
Amy Bates
Imposter
Haven’t figured out which is better. Haven’t figured out which is worse. I’m sitting at Mom’s dining table, listening to the washer work on the small load of her laundry that I put in a few moments ago. Hum and whoosh. Couldn’t the caregiver have done that before she left? Drinking instant coffee. Screen door open to let in the sound of a thousand crows—pissed off about something…
Mikki Aronoff
Smokey Says It’s Up to Us Now to Put Out Fires
…Something’s bothering my brother and everyone I know is afraid to ask him what’s wrong. He acts like he’s mad at the whole world and flings and hurls things around. We duck, take turns guessing. What’s Sam doing? Where does he go? I’m the only one who goes looking for him…
Elina Kumra
Cartography of Ruin
The GPS dies at Kilometer 72. My mother mutters from the backseat—déjà de mauvais augure—though she’s been predicting catastrophe since we left Beirut this morning. In the rearview mirror, her hands work prayer beads like she’s counting backwards from disaster…
Francine Witte
Another Winter
And still she didn’t tell her husband about the child she had and lost while she was with the other man. She meant to many times, but her husband seemed so in love with her, always bringing her marigold and holly, and she was afraid to touch that. Afraid it would melt the winter in which they lived…
Wendy BooydeGraaff
Laconic
The story, over, before it was finished. No words like butterflies flitting around the edges of the sentences. No embellished sensory details…
Andy Bodinger
District Red
It was the 90s, baby. My first job was wearing a fire hydrant suit for a short-lived novelty shop in the mall called District Red. I was supposed to stand out at the entrance, but I had just enough pride to not do that…
Chelsea Hanna Cohen
Prelude
For our sixth date, I take him to the field behind my home where the music grazes, swirls of song hovering over patches of grass. “They need the energy to grow,” I explain as he stands there, awed. “Listen,” and I take his hand…
Claire Breslow
Mona Lisa:
My grandfather sits in his eroded fabric chair, drinking tea from the pot I unearthed from the pantry. His fingers rest like sardines between where the handle detached from the mug. The sun’s blushing dusk begins to descend through the window as I clean. He looks out the bug-flickered screen, unaware that he was the last thing on my summer to-do list…
Tali Libenstein
Mug
When I see him again, he has a dry, flaky cut on his left hand. He rubs at it incessantly as he orders a coffee. Filtered, a bit of milk, and yes, he’ll take two sugars in there too, please. The usual. When he has the coffee in his hand he turns and looks at me. I can feel his eyes on me as he walks by, but not in the way that you look at a face you recognize…