Chocolate Cake

By Jennifer Wortman
My dad’s student from the college, who’d come over for dinner, looked at me and said, “You can’t have any chocolate cake!” I was one. He thought he was making a pretty good joke.

How My Mother Posed Me

By Gary Fincke
The photographer instructs my mother to hide under the dark maroon blanket to hold her infant still. “It takes time and quiet for your darling to be perfect,” he says.

The Swedish Word for Joy

By Brett Ann Stanciu
I begged off 2000 Census training and rushed up the windowless stairs of the cheap-paneled church basement.

Sister

By Eliot Li
With wild eyes, my sister presses her small body’s weight against the oven door. The iron stove bucks and knocks around, before going still.

Teaching English in the Biology Lab

By Gary Fincke
Sea life charts are props for Melville, the mounted cat a visual aid for Poe. Leaves are displayed like a nod to Thoreau.

Dimensions of Human Behavior

Alexandra N. Kontes
Shortly after we last spoke, you became a ghost, and I became a hermit.

Aviary

By Andrew Stancek
“The blue jays need sunflower seeds,” he gurgles, his rigid, wing-like arm shaking.

You play as a femme venom avatar & we never get past the character creation page

By Erin Vachon
We’re mashing up faces in the RPG campaign on your game system, two boys sitting, joysticking experience points in a multifaceted digitizer...

False Stars

By Frances Badgett
The frozen ground, hard and cold, lumped under their blanket, dug into them. She followed his finger to the sky.

Golden State

By Charles Prelle
We’re humming down the Pacific Coast Highway just north of San Francisco on our gap year in a rented real American cherry red 1993 Ford Mustang...

The Weight of Things

By Audrey Alt
Every Friday, she’s on time to pick up her grandfather, who teases, “Punctuality is your best quality.”

Wild Thing

By Karen Crawford
Mother empties Father’s pockets and confiscates his phone. Dollar bills unfurl. Pills scatter like candy across the floor.

John Lennon’s Ghost

By James Burt
I once went out with someone whose bath was haunted by John Lennon’s ghost. The faint sound of songs he never got to finish came through the pipes.

The Years, The Years

By Diane Gottlieb
When the aides on the night shift drift off to sleep, residents jump out of bed. Tiptoe down hallways to the recreation room. First one in hits the lights.

October Again

By Beth Sherman
Bark peels off the maples. Leaves wither and die, everyone says how beautiful. Sedum turning a muddy green, like rotten asparagus.

Taste Me and You Die

By Chelsea Stickle
In the natural world, yellow and black together mean danger. I’m striped like a bumblebee for the Halloween party...

Inheritance

By Keith J. Powell
I think of my father taking me to see Batman opening night. Teaching me poker at the cabin.

Clutch

By Mikki Aronoff
The way I remember it, your dad was dying, not mine, his purple-blotched feet peeking out the edge of the hospice bed, its cold rails raised against a fall.

Freckle Inventory

By Anslee Wolfe
Freckles scatter across his face, neck, arms. They hide beneath clothing. A large one dots his ear. Five pepper his cheek.

Over Easy

By Erin Dzida
“You go first, I’m still deciding,” I said as the waitress shifted her gaze, working her way around the table.