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The Abbreviated Kafka
By Ryan Griffith
“Kafka is born. You can trace his origins back to smoke, the stillness of staircases, the pallid sleep of bloodless dreamers.”
A fire of her own
By Pegah Ouji
“When Fatimah tugs at the peeling bark of a one-hundred-year-old eucalyptus tree, one jagged edge pierces her supple thumb, one drop of blood, red and round as Tehran’s setting sun streaking the sky red
Well Situated
By Angela Townsend
“I have not seen that man in a number of years. I wonder if he is still in the crawlspace of his bi-level, with the wind report in one hand and the edicts of AccuWeather in the other. All he wanted was a fair fight with the flukes of Barnegat Bay. You can fish in the rain.”
My Father Singing
By Jeff Friedman
“Most evenings, my father sang in his chair in the living room, even though he often didn’t know the words to the songs he was singing. He’d hum the melody or sing nonsense syllables to replace the words.”
English Teachers
By Sophia Carroll
“There was the one who always picked the same girl to be Juliet. He read for Romeo. Called her “statuesque.”
White Cold Winter
By Willow Campbell
“In the stillness of my apartment, I boil water to watch something move. I like bubbles when they grow into noises I can notice like the ghost of someone’s laugh.”
I Once Was a Witch
By Joanna Ruocco
“The broad-shouldered kombucha brewer holds a brain in a jar. His raincoat is boring. There is no one else in the coatroom. Beyond the coatroom, the potluck is raging. I hear a crack-crack-crack, the gluten-free table buckling under the weight of… what?”
My Sister’s Pink Mustache
By Kyle Smith-Laird
“She’s not this cancer-ridden husk; in my memory Sara lives.”
Husband, In My Dream
By Frances Gapper
“In my dream I sleepwalked downstairs and found you seated upright on the sofa, typing, typing. Couldn’t sleep, you said, because of the full moon’s horrible brightness.”
Guitar Hero
By Todd Clay Stuart
“Kenzie thinks the sun is a hoax but has no problem believing her cat can tell when she’s pregnant.”
The Last Lipstick Factory
By Dana Wall
“First, the sky forgot how to hold blue. It started at the horizons, a slow leaching of color like wet paper left in sun.”
Who By Fire
By Laila Amado
“In this story, we don’t die by fire. We don’t wake in the middle of the night to the screeching of the warning sirens on the phones under our pillows.”
City. Night. Bursting.
By Tommy Dean
“Look, I know I shouldn’t be looking, but the city heat has me out on the streets, the dusty air pushed between buildings by gliding cars, windows open, soft music orchestrating their growling engines down the road, bumper to bumper, red lights sending messages to the twinkling skies, exhorting their ownership over the land.”
Mosquitoes
By Kathryn Kulpa
“Summer. Night. Your hair smells of OFF! The flat pillow smells of OFF!, the damp sheets. Still they sneak in. The buzz. The whine. The slap. Gagging a little when you see the curl of black legs, the smear of blood.”
If You Must Know
By Barbara Diggs
“You saw your lil friends drown in a whirlpool of white, one by one, or sometimes one by two like when Tay-Tay got shot during a pickup and the bullet passed through his neck and hit Raymond in the shoulder as he was running away.”
Things That Are Easy To Lose
By Lisa Alexander Baron
“His questions and routines were now devoid of any impressions, substance, or the least bit of meaningful weight. His every word, every gesture—all too easy to ignore. Like a wet paper towel. A wrapper from a peppermint candy, minus the mint scent.”
In the Dark
By Ali Mckenzie-Murdoch
“Their names in lights, bright as their burning bodies, in the 1800s, ballet dancers often went up in flames. Gauzy tutus brushed flickering lamps, a pirouette of torched limbs, and incandescent hair.”
Elegy of an Eating Disorder
By Lindsey
“When you return to university, to that house that sits on the hill, you resume the painful life you left behind in the spring.”