Narrative nonfiction

/Tag:Narrative nonfiction

A Sunday in October

By | 2023-09-04T11:02:37-07:00 September 13th, 2023|Categories: Issue 141: September 2023|Tags: , , , , , , , , |

By Ariel M. Goldenthal   The day after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, I lied to my second-grade students: You are safe at Hebrew school. You will love learning the Aleph-Bet this year. Yes, you can open the windows and feel the early fall air ripple through the gaps between your outstretched fingers. You can [...]

Beowulf

By | 2023-03-09T13:07:50-08:00 March 15th, 2023|Categories: Issue 139: 16 March 2023|Tags: , , , , |

By Irene Cooper   While my glamorous friend Anne underwent her abortion, I sat at a lunch counter and ate a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate shake before returning to the abortion clinic in the urban grid of Brooklyn. I sat in the waiting area and read Beowulf, assigned by my high school sophomore English [...]

23rd of July Fireworks

By | 2023-01-05T17:09:14-08:00 December 7th, 2022|Categories: Issue 138: 08 December 2022|Tags: , , |

By the Maenad   There are four children playing on the playground below my office window. (The same one that was the target of a drive-by shooting a few weeks ago.) I heard the recognizable sounds of a familiar script being shouted and went to my window. No cops but The four children down there are [...]

Smile

By | 2022-12-07T09:24:00-08:00 December 7th, 2022|Categories: Issue 138: 08 December 2022|Tags: , , |

By Lisa Brand   They only told me to smile, like they know what that means. It’s time to show you who I am. . . . It’s scary, isn’t it? I show some teeth and suddenly you’re all over me like an animal, I should have bared my teeth, I’m not the person that you [...]

A Supreme Proposal

By | 2022-09-16T12:32:50-07:00 September 29th, 2022|Categories: Issue 137: 29 September 2022|Tags: , , , , , |

By Katie Avagliano   I'm not saying cannibalism is the only option. If we're talking animalistic magnetism—the old horizontal tango-—there are other ways to dispose of the sperm vehicles. Sure, arachnids control their own widowhood, and half of all Chinese mantises have copulations that end in the death of the male. In response, though, the male [...]

Lithium & High Heels

By | 2022-09-18T13:04:58-07:00 September 29th, 2022|Categories: Issue 137: 29 September 2022|Tags: , , , , , |

By Heather Dorn   Barbie’s feet come preformed for sexiness, but the rest of us must learn to curve our arches like a playground slide. We start young, even as babies, barely able to walk, staggering up church or pageant stage steps—sparkling quarter inch heels, lace dresses, makeup bruising our eyelids blue, punching our cheeks red. [...]

I don’t even remember his name

By | 2022-06-15T12:28:15-07:00 June 23rd, 2022|Categories: Issue 136: 23 June 2022|Tags: , , , |

By Sarah Gundle   Something made me think of him. For days now, it has been bothering me: I can’t remember his name. I can recall many of our conversations, the gentle character of his voice, the resignation in his eyes, but not his name. I’ve wracked my brain. I saw him almost twenty years ago [...]

Cicuta

By | 2022-03-06T12:48:49-08:00 March 17th, 2022|Categories: Issue 135: 17 March 2022|Tags: , , , , , |

By K. L. Lord   The delicate blooms, alabaster petaled and fragrant, sprout from gardens across the land, mingling with the peas and green beans. They are lovely, but they’ve never grown here before. The first person to find them thought they were carrots, but when pulled from the ground, tendrils of roots ripple through the [...]

Suffocating

By | 2021-11-26T12:17:29-08:00 December 15th, 2021|Categories: Issue 134: 15 December 2021|Tags: , , , , |

By Keily Blair   The smell first strikes me while we’re traveling down the road, confined to a car. Brutal citrus and bitter herbs mingle in the air, gagging me. My grandmother notices this, and a rushed apology flees her lips despite the fact that I’ve told her countless times that strong scents send me straight [...]

Backyard Musings in America at Twilight

By | 2021-09-12T13:07:04-07:00 September 22nd, 2021|Categories: Issue 133: 22 September 2021|Tags: , , , , , |

By Ashley R. Carlson   6:52 p.m. Summer, twilight, after a thunderous lightning-streaked monsoon that flooded streets and yards and sent trashcans floating into traffic-stalled intersections. Seventy-eight degrees here in Phoenix, uncharacteristically tolerable for the Sonoran desert mid-August. A breeze ruffles my hair, my German shepherd panting nearby as she lifts her long, jet-black snout to [...]

And They Lived Happily Ever After

By | 2020-12-26T11:07:25-08:00 December 24th, 2020|Categories: Issue 125: 24 December 2020|Tags: , , , |

By Myna Chang   Myna Chang writes flash fiction and short stories. Recent work has been featured in Flash Flood Journal, Atlas & Alice, Reflex Fiction, Writers Resist, and Daily Science Fiction. Anthologies featuring her stories include the Grace & Gravity collection Furious Gravity IX; and the forthcoming This is What America Looks Like anthology by [...]

Yes, All

By | 2020-06-09T12:06:55-07:00 June 11th, 2020|Categories: Issue 112: 11 June 2020|Tags: , , , , |

By Sarah Sheppeck   A Car break-ins were frequent in the city. Insurance only covered the damage if I produced a police report, so when I left work to find another window smashed, I simply left for the precinct. It was already dark. Trying to avoid traffic, I stayed on side roads and in residential neighborhoods. [...]

Please, Be Safe

By | 2020-02-17T14:14:23-08:00 February 20th, 2020|Categories: Issue 104: 20 February 2020|Tags: , |

By Tyhi Conley   Before they arrived, we were laughing, telling stories outside of the convenience store. Over the years, the store’s owner got to know us. He’d sold to us since we were kids buying dollar Arizona’s and 50 cent honey buns every summer day on our way to the pools, courts, or houses of [...]

The Rainbow Sign

By | 2020-01-06T07:46:57-08:00 January 9th, 2020|Categories: Issue 101: 09 January 2020|Tags: , |

By Sara Marchant   We went, my mother and I, to get haircuts. The previous appointment was still there, standing in front of the mirror, talking. This woman’s hair made her look like a pretty Afghan dog; her large green eyes did little to compensate for wearing clothes too dowdy for a woman in her forties. [...]

Good Mourning, America

By | 2020-11-06T15:38:01-08:00 August 8th, 2019|Categories: Issue 92: 08 August 2019|Tags: , , , , , , , |

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt   It’s eighth-grade writing class day and the weekly morning jaunt to my favorite little school, nestled in a rural Southern California valley. Here, the water table’s level prevents developers from bulldozing nurseries and groves, and there’s still a farmer’s grange. A canopy of Live Oaks shades my drive to the school, where [...]