Unused Magic
By Maureen McElyThere are wishes in my hair, constellations of fluff from dandelion ghosts my daughter blows in my direction.
Settling Into The Rest Home for Ragged Girls
By Anika CarpenterThe island’s breakers rattle windows. Filthy storm clouds snigger, ‘“the jetty is as brittle as your bones.”
I Wish I Could Tell My Dead Husband
By Jamy BondThat I stole his Percocet stash and then helped him look for it. That I found his suicide note tucked inside his dog-eared copy of Infinite Jest.
In the Psychiatric Emergency Room
By Yu LiYou make up reasons for skipping pills. You must lie because the robins are watching, rolling both paranoid eyeballs, their jaundiced bellies bulging...
Common Ground
By Sara Siddiqui ChansarkarMy name is Sara, I say. I’m from India. Never met an Indian with that name, they say. Is it short for something? No, that’s my first name. I say.
It’s Better This Way
By AJ AtwaterThe convertible black as night with straight-up fins and a grille like shark’s teeth comes to rest in the bar’s parking lot among long-bed pickups with pipes and lumber and paint-splattered extension ladders...
Photo Story: Arcana
By Robert KealEach card foretells a fresh doom. She lays them side by side, three perfect slabs, her bridge towards the truth.
Jigsaw Puzzle
By Roberta BearyWhen someone said, I saw your husband eating out with another woman, he said she’s a colleague and I believed him...
Foreign Countries
By Emily FarrantoWhen we fell in love, my future husband wrote: Being with you feels like being in a foreign country.
Lullaby for Mariupol
By Stephen ConnacherI remember the chilly winter carnivals at Drama Theater, and the new green and yellow maternity hospital. Neighborhood babushkas gossip among the falling leaves.
Darling at Dinner
By Ellie PruskoThe waiter was staring at Darling, not me. When Darling admitted she wasn't 18, he left her wine glass anyway. He took mine immediately, probably mistaking me for 12.
Photo Story: Dan Needs Sober Friends
By Patrick GreweShe screams toward him: “There are faces…” points adamantly “…in the lights!”
Your Hair Looks Like Taillights
By Lexi ButlerYou talk to your mother in Spanish, your sister in English, and then in numbers to order Chinese take-out. And you love to talk, especially about how you grew up in a one-room walk-up.
Photo Story: Testing Mom’s Claims During Lunch at the Tail End of Our Final Family Vacation
By Abbie BarkerThey’re arguing again. Mom says she shouldn’t sit in the sun...
Struck Silent by Whalesong
By James ClaffeyThe morning of my mother's last day on earth the nurses didn't notice her waif-like frame slip out the door...
Book Review: Snowdog
By Beret OlsenIn Snowdog, Kim Chinquee’s latest collection of flash fiction, the writing is clean and concise, the language unornamented. “[T]he best time to make fake snow is when it’s actually snowing,” she writes in the opening story.
Photo Story: The Gaps Between
By Denise BayesThey announced on the radio that Freddie was dead. I picked up the phone. “Come over,” he said.
Photo Story: Valentine
By Christy BrothersMom packs us into the car. Billy and Jasmine sleep. I sit up front chewing the corners of my nails until they bleed.
Canadensis
By Corinne SilverThey arrived silently, swiftly during the night and stood present by morning. They flocked the fields, parking lots, and manmade suburban ponds. They were big.
