Nonfiction from Vikram Ramakrishnan
Photo: Mylene2401 Directions for a Child Immigrating to the US in the 1980s Watch Appa and Amma avert their eyes while telling Thatha and Paati that it will only be for a little while; play with your stuffed elephant while they argue; see Thatha shake his head and Paati tap her cane against the ground; […]
Nonfiction from Marina Flores
Photo: Cristian Newman Three Things She Said in Spanish 1 “¡Cierre la puerta! Cierre la puerta antes de que entren los pollos,” my blind, wheelchair-bound great-grandmother repeated from the kitchen table, a cup of lukewarm coffee snug in her flour-dusted fingers. The thing is, we didn’t own any chickens. Still, I admired how each vowel […]
Nonfiction from Jessica Barksdale
Photo: Fallon Michael This Decade I got married and stayed married. No small feat, trust me. The arc of second marriage, shorter, a meteor of desire and hope, and then, whoa! We are on that same damn spaceship we were on before, with different people. Hang on. If you dare. A flare of need, a flame […]
Fiction from Joseph Darlington
Photo: Taton Moïse Ratcatcher When they found the rat, Ula screamed. In fact, she wouldn’t stop screaming until the ratcatcher arrived. The girls giggled behind their hands. Anything that wound up the Puritan made them laugh. They all worked in the house of Pan and Pani Krolig, rich merchants in the port of Gdansk. Ula, […]
Poetry from Shome Dasgupta
Photo: Anelale Nájera Path of the Petals Soft thuds against beaten mud, horse’s hooves, crashing red breath, dying creek full of pebbles, eroded banks, irrigated souls travel: find paths—forgotten, years from now, the way the petals fall, sad and thinned, wiry branches, embrace air, gleam, Find nothing but nothing, nothing works well when not seeking, […]
Poetry from Amanda Little Rose
Photo: Dima Pechurin Stowaway There’s a hole in my sweater From when I got caught— On the bedroom door jamb— Trying to run, From every bad thing I’ve ever done. . . Amanda Little Rose has been a high school English teacher for five years, and graduated with a Bachelors of Arts and Science in […]
Fiction from Lucy Zhang
Photo: Hudson Hintze Double Flash When the nuclei broke down into smaller pieces like Styrofoam ground into confetti, the rest of the atoms could not help but follow in the same snowballing self-destruction: neutrons waltzing to their death, cleaved into remnants of themselves and photons trailing in their light-footed steps. And when there were almost […]
Poetry from Diana Donovan
Photo: Blake Wheeler Some Houses The houses where you were afraid to fall asleep they weren’t like the others on the tree-lined street by the pond the neighborhood kids cleared after the snow everyone lacing up their skates as the sun climbed high on the ridge setting up the plywood hockey goals—and later one of […]
Poetry from S. Preston Duncan
Photo: Luke Porter You Don’t Steal from the Witch’s Garden This girl had flowers in her arms ………ink from Araby ……embraces like curry in a burning room or a spice market on its side. When she touches you it is the way children splash in aspects of autumn and marigolds always face you somehow. You […]
Fiction from Olivia Kingery
Photo: LwcyD Alice finds an antique coin collection When her grandfather died, Alice brushed her finger over the dust collected on his furniture. The two had played cribbage earlier that week, but now, it was Thursday, and her grandfather was dead. This is how she finds the coins: in the back of his closet, behind […]
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