By DW McKinney These words—the ones in this note and the ones in this issue—are difficult to write. Do not look away from them. Let them sink into you. I am writing this editor’s note after I have seen a father carry his son, blown to pieces, in a yellow bag, and I fought (and [...]
By Lori Yeghiayan Friedman is what my (now long-dead) mother used to say to the TV news reports of the bombings, beheadings, settlements, kidnappings, hijackings, imprisonments, killings―the latest eruptions of violence in a region far away, part of a war my mother fled with her family decades earlier. She said it while sitting in the [...]
By N. de Vera I fidgeted at the line for immigration after arriving at LAX. When it was my turn, I calmly answered the officer’s questions, hoping this was a routine interview that would go smoothly. However, when I saw that look on his face, I knew what I was in for—again. “Wait here, ma’am,” [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
