Jaclyn Watterson
My sister had taken up with a landlord who owned our building,
most of the others on the block, and a toilet factory. My sister
had taken to putting toilets in the most outlandish places, and
could not be reasoned with. Peg called it a phase, but my sister said,
Flushing is both ancient and contemporary, in every sense.
Jaclyn Watterson
No surprise, the Yankee Doodle Dandy is trying to date me. He
is some sort of man, or a jack-o’-lantern. He looks like cotton
candy.
You’re not, I told him yesterday, my type.
Siamak Vossoughi
They were walking back from a football game. It was almost
winter. It was cold and gray, but it had been cold and gray for
months in Seattle, so there were varieties, and today the air was
almost clean enough to qualify as a clear sky.
By Richard Chiem
She looks drowsier than yesterday, her hands barely gripping the wheel, making a soft left off the main road and toward a dirt path hidden in the willow trees. Cars pass and glide away in the rearview mirror.
Lonely Christopher
This is culture and this is the idea that kidnaps itself. The wild
hour come, a dissolving logic through the brigade and its
assembly — toy-sized dramas, precessions at excellent volumes,
the inevitable cruelty displayed in boys, those who are unreachable as they
are always reaching for themselves and missing and reaching again.
By Ann Ryles
Mary Montrose envisioned duct tape. Silver duct tape. A fat sticky strip across her daughter’s mouth. That would do to keep Kevyn quiet. Sixteen-year-old Kevyn made Mary wish for human mute buttons, snipped vocal chords, or her own loss of hearing.
Vivian Abenshushan
Translated by Adam Morris
The dabbler is a philosopher without a system; he believes, like
Pascal, that “Since we cannot be universal and know all that
is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about
everything.
By Francisco García González
Translated by Mary G. Berg
Even though it was his native language, John Anderson had his problems with English. He’d had to use the internet in order to find a worker to hire. That’s why he’d posted the ad.
Francisco García González
Translated by Mary G. Berg
When she gave up her efforts to adopt a Jordanian child, it was
the hardest decision she’d ever made in her life.
Brigitte returned devastated from her trip to Amman.
How could people bear to live like that? When she got back, she went
to the Caribbean for a vacation.
By Han Ong
There are 315 rooms in the Dream Hotel. I wouldn’t be able to verify that, I’m only repeating what the manager spouted on one of my training days. I have charge of a fraction of that, mainly floors seven and eight, the cheapest rooms as well as the tiniest.
By Thaddeus Rutkowski
My brother and sister and I took my mother to a parking lot to teach her to ride a bicycle. We rolled a child’s bike along with us. The bike had one gear, and its brake was built into the pedals. When we got to the paved area next to the local school, we helped our mother onto the bike. “Go for it,” we said. “Pump.”
By Lewis Buzbeez
It’s true I’ve stopped going out, it’s hard enough to walk to the mailbox on weekends.
By Joe Wenderoth
The following is excerpted from Agony: a proposal, a work in progress. The book is a proposal. What is proposed is a game, Agony, wherein three teams (each made up of five persons, known as Pioneers) compete.
By Alvin Lu
He was writing four, five essays at a time now. As reports of successes from early applicants began to circulate (there’d been an admission into Columbia) and the late-deadline applicants made their final push, Eddie considered bringing in a second writer, but Horace told him to hold off.
By Stacey Levine
A few years back, I Skyped him from my dorm. Yes, he was dead, but he had his laptop with him and picked up the call.
My computer’s window fuzzed, frosty blue. Then he was there: the craggy face and big brown hair.
By Stacey Levine
A middle-aged man hid from himself because he saw himself in a young boy. The experience stirred him. He willed his own boyishness to life. This was Jules.
But after he bent his head to the boy’s shoulder in the park, it went wrong. People were frightened and talked. Jules decided he must leave the town.
By Daniel Borzutzky
Let’s begin at the end, she says.
The best way to end a sentence is with the word “blank.”
By Matthew Roberson
Preparation
It’s up at six, and in and out of the bath, and feeding the dogs, and making sure she’s got all the equipment in the truck. She’s got to make sure of your supplies ahead of time, because there’s no way during the day to stop at the Depot and get more bleach.