Michael Leal García
Abel sat upon their yellowing birch and took in the night sky. He had to imagine the stars for the light pollution that blotted them out. But if he squinted just right, he could see how the lights up in Dodger Stadium looked like dandelions.
Geri Lipschultz
Before her arrival—without the tendril and buds—her mother had wanted a boy. Later, she would make vaginas everywhere, shifting her arms to see the cleft between forearm and upper arm, to see mushed flesh between a calf folded against thigh, between her thumb and forefinger.
Moinul Ahsan Saber
Translated by Shabnam Nadiya
It was afternoon when Pocha returned with the news. Grinning, he pushed open the tin door of Ramzan’s hut and entered. His eyes were of different sizes, making his gaze a bit strange.
Al Simmons
The last time I saw Howser was at Pauli Pratt’s new flat on Fat Street, just west of Broadway, a couple blocks inland from the lake on the far Northside of Chicago, in East Rogers Park.
Peter J. Grieco
It was the cleverest of all my dreamers
who provides the next example. She had
rebelled, violently, against the idea
of having to spend the summer
Peter J. Grieco
Dreaming has been compared with the random
cacophony resulting from “the ten
fingers of a man who knows nothing about
music, as they wander over the keys
Sean Mahoney
Am foreign.
Am false equivalence.
Radiographic spread. Orgiastic
systems: thin white matter
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines.
Alfredo Barnaby
At dusk the skirt would unfold from an inkblot.
I would follow each hem,
vase of barren soil tilting forth,
palms welled for a spare garden,
Craig Evenson
Without the thrashing snake
it is till:
a cross, i,
a pair of trainless rails
a vacant trail
Sophie Strand
def. the world as experienced by a particular organism.
All I want is a red dress. I can circumscribe the island
in a day’s walk. My forays into other worlds always involve me
Ieisha Banks
There was always a light in the dark. It dimly shined down from her room at the top of the stairs and no matter what I was always able to see it directly.
Jody Azzouni
1.
Ican’t stand it, Lisa yells at me. (Yells. Really.) He sits in the bedroom all day long, staring at that giant screen. Watching cartoons and imitating their expressions and sounds. Baby boomers, he says, and then he sounds like Porky Pig. Bugs Bunny. Or Popeye.
Cristina Vega
She called the main attraction a grindylow like she called her bared teeth a smile. She went around the line of anxious visitors to check for tickets while the lights in the tent began to brighten into consciousness.
Padma Prasad
In her mid-thirties, Fern, the sculptor, was about five feet tall, very bony and pale, her face long and elegant, with a strong pointed chin.
John Jodzio
Last summer I had sex with a hair stylist named Lori once or twice a week depending on her energy level and whether or not she’d made lemon bars.
Kirin Khan
Everyone knew the baby would be a boy. Mahjabin’s belly hung low, and she ate lots of meat, and her rear swelled upwards, these telltale signs.
B. Mason
Christine’s return to work prompted a party in the conference room. There were cupcakes and hugs and gag gifts, and thirtysomething executives mused on the preciousness of life.
Peter H.Z. Hsu
Theresa Choi and her father are sitting on his couch. They’re in her father’s living room in front of her father’s new Ectoscope™ Screen. Dad is having trouble with the technology.