Darling at Dinner

By Ellie Prusko
The 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.

Your Hair Looks Like Taillights

By Lexi Butler
You 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.

Canadensis

By Corinne Silver
They arrived silently, swiftly during the night and stood present by morning. They flocked the fields, parking lots, and manmade suburban ponds. They were big.

Her Mother, My Mother

By Hema Nataraju
Her mother never wore a sari, my mother never did not. Her mother drove a Mustang, my mother walked everywhere, even though I hated being picked up last.

Photo Story: At a speed of 0.5 inches per second

By Nora Nadjarian
The heartbeat is fast and sharp, except no one knows where the snail’s heart is.

Don’t Bother, They’re Here

By Meg Pokrass
“Guess what, Hon? They’re here!” you said, referring to the clowns. They were pounding on our door.

Gone Hunting

By Binx R. Perino
Danny sucks the wet end of a cigarette, tapping his hand on the steering wheel. Wisps of Maggie’s hair whip around from the rolled-down windows.

Cuata

By Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera
All my life they called me Cuata. But I was the only one born whole. Mi hermano, Juan, neverbreathed. But I heard him cry.

Kingdom Come

By D.E. Hardy
Still, I hunger for you: those nights we’d get so high we turned into earthworms, how we would writhe, reverent, our entire bodies capable of taste...

Grace at the Intersection of Cass and Nebraska

By Joanna Theiss
Today, I saw you accepting a dollar bill from a truck window. The shake of your hips as you thanked the driver reminded me of your electric slide at the middle school dance.

Post-It Mortem

By Dave Donovan
Life got too complex for Dan. Job. Wife. Kids. Yard. So he bought a block of Post-It notes and found a calmess in the sticky squares...

Betty’s Begonia

By Sharon Boyle
They buried Betty between bomb raids in a no-fuss, grassy grave. Overnight the sod erupted with vagina-pink begonias.

Marrakesh

By Gay Degani
Rosemary, mint, and donkey dung perfume the hot, dry air. Hawkers croon siren songs as I meander crowded alleys, ignoring patterned baskets...

Southern Discomforts

By Molly Giles
Dean’s wife was in one of her moods, she had a lot of moods, that girl, and she burst into the party baited for bear.

After attending an anti-war protest in Hyde Park

By Sam Payne
A fatality on the line at Acton stops the trains leaving Paddington and we stare at the departure boards, eyes still stinging from the tear gas.

Out of Why

By Bryan Starchman
It was Day 172 of sheltering in place and Karen was going to kill her family.

Arabella

By Katie Burgess
We were neighborhood royalty right up until the cops searched our house. They weren’t even looking for Arabella—they wanted all the car stereos Daddy took.

The week our landlord kicks us out

By Frankie McMillan
No rescue anywhere so we huddle around a fire under the railway bridge. Bennie says he knows where to score free chicken and he scrolls the Poultry Rehoming page.

In Case You Missed It

By Kim Magowan
There was a window when one could grocery shop without a mask. There was a window after my mother stopped chemo when she felt better, gained a few pounds. The color returned to her face.

Foreclosure

By Alice Hatcher
They ordered beef bourguignon and an expensive bottle of cabernet, something extravagant to celebrate the closing.