By Louella Lester
“It’s your nature, you must go, is what I tell my Canada Goose when summer heat sends him north or winter winds pull him south.”
No Sunshine, No Home
read more
Flash
Latest Reviews
Featured Interview
Newest Essay
Reading John Cheever During Monday Night Football
By Laton Carter
“Somebody is always settling the score. On the terrace, before and after dinner—drinks, the air rich with assignation.”
When Are You Going To Land
By Michael Tyler
“She used to skinny dip in the ocean, her swimsuit at water’s edge. I would keep my shorts on and earn her daily jibes.”
The Foal
By Lorette C. Luzajic
“I did everything they told me, but still, I got smaller. And everything hurt, even the sunlight on my skin. I didn’t tell anyone what was going on in inside of me, how lonely it felt to know you were going to die when you were just a colt yourself.”
oh god. what the fuck.
By Noah Leventhal
“you are drunk. everyone is loud. the man who smells like burning sage and leather has been following you around the party. you have been longing for a quiet place to fold into.”
Tidepool Sestina
By Tiff M. Z. Lee
“When the tide is low, it reminds me of our honeymoon—holding hands as we balance on rocky islands emerging from the sea, hair wavy with salt spray, feeling lucky to be here.”
[Sarah takes her niece and nephew to the trampoline park]
By Brendan Todt
“Sarah takes her niece and nephew to the trampoline park and for thirty-six minutes mistakes another boy in a blue tee and shorts for her nephew, who suddenly appears behind her to ask for money for a slushie, which she gives him.”
Night at St. Pierre Hospital 2020
By Angeline Schellenberg
“She keeps close to the courtyard window she came through, her ears tuned to nurses’ flats slapping down the hallway. Her brother’s shaky hand reaches across the tray for a water glass.”
She Never Sees Her Mother
By Annette Gulati
“She never sees her ailing mother. She only listens to her on the telephone, rattling on about the dialysis treatments, the trips to the emergency room, the stabbing pain in her abdomen. Likely the cancer.”
Her First Dead Body
By Annette Gulati
“She’s six years old when she sees her cat dangling from her father’s hands in the open doorway of her bedroom, a circus act in her very own hallway.”
Once in our home in Agra, the monsoon was over
By Tara Isabel Zambrano
“we took off our PJs, and became the afternoon—our earlobes and neck, our limbs and nails turning pink from the syringe of the sun, asphalt gritting our feet, downstairs our mothers calling our names circled red with curses…”
Again Oblivion
By Nan Wigington
“History vanishes beneath our mausoleum’s gray rubble, the wedges of marble. No one knows anymore when Aunt Lydia was born, who primogenitor married, when Baby Thomas died.”
Driving Lessons
By Rob Yates
“She felt like the big, dead moon. There was a penumbra around her. It was all the things she couldn’t quite say to people, mixed with all the things she couldn’t quite think about herself.”
The Ever-After of Hunters Forever Lost in the Forest
By Amy Marques
“We’re captive, forever separated from our before-lives, not free to leave, but free to learn from the forest we’d once set out to plunder.”
Bark
By Sarp Sozdinler
“I went into the woods as a man and came back as a tree. My arms are gnarly and twisting like a branch. My feet are root-like. My heart is bark.”
Such Good Care
By Ani King
“My mom has never been one for much crying. Not that she never cried, she was a child once, and sometimes one of my aunts will get the sharp, gleeful look of a wronged sibling about to cash in on a little emotional revenge.”
Popo Hasn’t Given Up on Pressuring Us to Have a Baby Yet
By Huina Zheng
“Popo is relentless again. She calls Yong daily, asking why fate dealt her a son who forgets her sacrifices.”
The Sunday Morning Obituaries
By Libby Copa
“Reading the obituaries this morning I came across Jaclyn. I hadn’t thought of her much in fifty years, but maybe I think of her a little every day in some way, certainly I think of her in autumn.”
You Ain’t No Fuckin’ Warren
By JWGoll
“For months, whenever I am outside, he stares, trying to make me feel guilty. The damn dog doesn’t focus on anyone else and I don’t know what I’ve done to rate the attention, but he’s beginning to piss me off.”
Why My Daughter, Ellie, Is Not Living Up to Her Potential as a Reader
By Coleman Bigelow
“Because both my wife and I are writers. Because when I’m thinking about a story, Ellie says I’m hard to reach. Because when my wife is on deadline, I’m the one who does the cooking, and it always turns out burnt.”
Hummingbirds Remember Every Flower They Visit
By Beth Sherman
“When the hummingbird hovers over the dead coneflower, Dylan stops twirling to get a better view. He’s made himself dizzy, staggering across our backyard, loopy from spinning, and we try to imagine how the tiny creature appears to him, its scarlet throat a blur, its beak vibrating shakily.”
Z Special Unit
By Curt Saltzman
“At times, I felt I was living with a stranger to see him huddled with his cronies, cocktail in hand, naked to the waist, a carnation lei hanging from his neck like a fallen halo, beneath the softly swaying lanterns, or choosing albums from the personal collection he rarely touched otherwise.”
Needle
By Elena Zhang
“Let me tell you about your lao ye, Ayi says. I feel a pressure on my wrist, then a sharp tap as the needle bites into flesh, hovering just above rivers of blood.”
There Is No Gold Here
By Elena Zhang
“When I was young, my father loved to tell me the story of the man who buried gold in his backyard.”
The Interruption
By Cheryl Snell
“The image I had almost captured is severed. The ink scrapes dry. My thoughts are caught in the tumble of spun sugar in my brain. It melts and it sticks.”
Three Rings and a Window to Heaven
By Jacob Griffin Hall
“Three and a half months ago, we opened the door and sidestepped the bird. The poor thing had died right at the front step. It was terribly sad, I thought, to die. Even worse with a landlord who’d leave you to the insects.”
Pies with Secrets
By Karen Walker
“But hers were pies with secrets. How much sugar and cinnamon, but also what could be wrong inside.”
Empty Pockets
By Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena
“My wife informed me that my son had a fever. She was agitated and upset. She stayed in bed beside our child all night with her prayer books and rosary.”
Eulogy in Pigtown
By Craig Kirchner
“Sober Monday mornings we discussed Kafka, Sartre, and you. Champagne on ice in case you visited, knowing you wouldn’t. In between sets you read poems.”
How to be Cool Like Frankie
By Catherine Chiarella Domonkos
“Doormen, delivery guys, and nannies call out to Frankie in Spanish when we walk over to the playground in Washington Square. Guapo is the one word I can always make out. Handsome. Grown-ups notice him.”