Watery light came through the small patch of window above her kitchen table, enough to guide Maribella to the now-silent fridge. She had not been aware that her fridge hummed until it stopped humming. She had not been aware how many sounds electricity makes until […]
Mongoose by Anita Goveas
I should have written before. Papa sent me the boondi ladoos you like, and I knew I should try to explain. You’ve been waiting so patiently. He’s doing that more often now, sending treats but mixing up people’s favourites, sometimes their names. He addressed the […]
Goodbye & Goodluck by Hannah Sutherland
Imagine this. You’re glancing out the window, watching the clouds float as you glide towards your future. The woman next to you twirls her iridescent earrings and turns the fan above her head, muttering about the clamminess. Don’t you feel it too? she asks you […]
Cemetery by Wood Reede
Her grandparent’s home was located on a quiet street directly across from an old cemetery. At night, when the house was silent and everyone was asleep, she would climb out of bed, sit by the window, and watch the evening mist blanket the gravestones one […]
13 Things You Should Know About My Husband by Michael Todd Cohen
1. Husband will never believe you when you tell him he’s beautiful, but you must keep trying. 2. He doesn’t go for closing doors. Cabinets, screens, freezers: they will not be closed. You must close them. 3. Things he opens: emails (occasionally), The New York […]
Your Girlfriend as the American Dream by Cathy Ulrich
She will be white picket fences, white wall tires, she will be white robes, white hoods, flame-glow torches, rifle-crack from shooting range at dusk, she will be not that kind of neighborhood, she will be it doesn’t happen here, she will be yapping dogs chained […]
Spinners by J.B. Stone
To some, it’s the cheap, last minute gift picked up from a distant father, idling through the display shelves of Dollar General. For Malcolm it was release. Grasped between his palms, it worked its underrated magic, trickling down the nerves of his fingers, a gentle […]
James by J. Edward Kruft
We weren’t friends, unless you count that week. Can a week be considered a friendship? And then it is heard from a great distance that at not quite 46, he’s dead, and it makes one reassess history, and its influences. I don’t recall who sneaked […]
Wave-Particle Duality by Amie M. Geistman
The first time I let you touch my body, the sky is dark; the lights are off. I close my eyes, too, because intimacy feels easier this way. An inverse reaction between particles—or are they waves, or perhaps they are both, I can never remember—of […]
Hard Truths About the Soft Lies My Body Tells Me by Pat Foran
Dear Eloise, My body lies over the ocean. My body lies over the sea. My body lies by the light of tonight’s grieving moon. It lies by proxy. It lies wherever and whenever it feels like it. It’s also falling apart, my body. It’s failing. […]
I Strongly Admire How That One Dream Sequence in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Always Makes You Cry by Shawn Berman
Watching Jim Carrey on the Late Show with David Letterman (circa 2004), we agree that it takes a special man to make a crowd laugh by doing nothing—by just being there, existing, smiling the biggest smile we’ve ever seen. But Jim Carrey is able to […]
Naming Phoenix by Sara Dobbie
Waist deep in the slate gray waves of a Great Lake, a woman is wading. When the loss of Jacob becomes too heavy, she drifts out here to float. She steps into a blanket of seaweed, dips down, startled by a lone diving Tern. Remains […]
