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.”
Again Oblivion
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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.”
No Clapping
By Sean Ennis
“Today the class was told, no clapping! It is simply too loud, and there isn’t that much to celebrate. The sound baffles match our school colors, but they are ineffective. The antique windows rattle with applause. If you came here to be congratulated, I’ve got news for you. But if you came here, you’re in the right place.”
How the Future Deals with XX
By Kat Meads
“XX is not prepared for the future. She does not fail to engage with the oncoming due to indifference, ingrained fatalism, or a preference for surprise; she does not resist preparation on heroic, radical principle. Nothing about her predicament reflects choice.”
On the Anniversary of Steven’s Death
By Bethany Jarmul
“My neighbor Dan says I need therapy because today, when a bald eagle landed on my porch railing, dropping a feather on my freshly painted deck, I threw a dart at it. But what does he know?”
Mulberries
By Jon Doughboy
“June in the rustbelt and we’re raving drunkenly down the street trying to catch mulberries in our mouths as they fall, chomp chomp chomp their bloody juice and save them from the sidewalk.”
Pandemic Feature: Casting Call
By Peter Kline
“We’re going to need a younger child. These teenagers are obviously compromised by moneysex and existential dread.”
Pandemic Feature: Biopic
By Peter Kline
“Why don’t we value them when they’re alive?”
“Why don’t we value ourselves?”
Going, Going, Gone
By Amy Marques
“I hear myself say they are gone. Even as I say it, I know I am wrong. Is anyone ever truly gone?”
Honest
By Amy Marques
“The last time she lied was a minute ago. She hasn’t told the truth in years. Her tongue wraps itself around assurances of happiness with no repentances, she is independent, able, fine, fine, fine.”
Television, Explained
By Anthony Varallo
“The main television was in the family room. Usually the main television was large, in comparison to other televisions around the house, say, a twelve-inch black and white atop a kitchen counter, or, in some luckier, more fortunate homes, a fourteen-inch color console injecting a guest bedroom with blue-green light.”
Cinders: A Love Story
By Keith Hood
“Perhaps we should not have done it. He’s been sitting in the closet waiting for her since 1993. His cardboard-colored container resembling an oversized Chinese take-out box with the requisite thin metal handle.”
Bess Recalls the Great Depression
By Kathryn Silver-Hajo
She paints WPA-inspired scenes of fishermen and farm hands, the frame shop on Flatbush a ruckus of wood and wire, tools and nails.