Fiction from Isaac Fox
Photo: Camden & Hailey George The Near Future of Death The soft-spoken young woman at the corner table is Death. In her very long life, she’ll talk about herself exactly once, to exactly one person. That person is the bland young man working his way over to her corner, double-fisting cheap beers and making a […]
Fiction from Avalon Felice Lee
Photo: Maddy Baker The Chilla Before gloving up, Ellen strokes the fur shawl on the mannequin. It’s chinchilla, brown, so soft it feels abstract, like the idea of a thing rather than the thing itself. Bora peeks around Ellen’s thigh, fidgeting with her apron string. “Was the chilla killed, Mama?” she wonders, her voice littler […]
Fiction from Sarp Sozdinler
Photo: Aaron Burden Pebbles I’m five and I find a dead sparrow in our backyard. My father screams at the TV after a missed penalty kick, muffling the intensity of my cries. I’m six and misplacing the letters in a schoolbook. I’m seven and diving headfirst from the lid of the Brighton pier, saltwater crusting […]
Fiction from Stephen Tuttle
Ransom We paid because what choice did we have? Mom signed the papers on the mortgage and emptied the savings account and collected what she could from family. At the credit union, they turned all that money into a wire transfer and then, zip, it was nothing more than a thin receipt. After that, we […]
Fiction from Tim Goldstone
Photo: Jez Timms The Breakthrough After so long enthusiastically exploring my psychological wreckage in your Californian way, “talking it all out” you loved to say—more sledgehammer than scalpel—you eventually found my black box weeks after you ceased your official excavation; and you’d actually been happier for calling off the search, calm, contented, before accidentally stumbling […]
Fictions from Christine H. Chen
Photo: Fran Jacquier Osteonecrosis Ah Ma’s incessant moaning drove Ba to his grave. I took his place bearing the avalanche of her rants. The price of an onion, the handyman tracking dirt inside the hallway, Ba’s ghost not helping her find her eyeglasses, a squirrel burying nuts in her potted tomato plant. Her tirades slowed […]
Nonfiction from Roman Cherevko
Original Photo: Julian Hochgesang The Pigeons Are Gone I didn’t notice when the feathered creatures disappeared, but something was wrong. I started analyzing my insomnia, looking for that small detail that could have changed my entire sleep-wake cycle. And here it was. No cooing from the kitchen hood as the birds perched on the rooftop […]
Nonfiction from Lori Yeghiayan Friedman
Original Photo: Umanoide The Emperor’s Dentist Something propelled this great-grandfather of mine to leave. With dental instruments strapped to his back, the sandstone spires of Cairo dusted, he headed southward on horseback with a third wife, a son from a former marriage, and six strong donkeys laden with rugs and silver, soon arriving in Addis […]
Fiction from Melissa Fitzpatrick
Photo: Mostafa Ashram Mostafa Only Water, Then Sky When you’re a fish, it doesn’t occur to you to look up, to try to see past the edge of the known world. There is only water, and how the water moves the kelp, and how the kelp moves with the water, back and forth, back and […]
Nonfiction from Gail DiMaggio
Photo: Marek Piwnicki Helpless Why didn’t we help, a neighbor asks me, though helping them wasn’t really possible and it’s too late now, anyway. Wolves, she adds. Even wolves help their own. I’m not sure she’s right about the wolves. I decide to look it up later. —§— It’s June, 2022. Concord, New Hampshire, our […]
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