Ty Hall

She never let me in her bed, not at first anyway. She said she didn’t let any men in her bed. I didn’t believe her, seeing from the hallway purple velvet Velcro hand restraints wrapped around her headboard’s posts.

D-L Alvarez

This was a Mexican restaurant in Oakland. Milo was in the back area, taking the corner stage to sing karaoke. It was 1998 and Milo was celebrating his birthday, but then the plug was pulled, mid-“Never Let Me Down Again.”

Rachel Nagelberg

I left and changed my shape. I had been stifled, not lived. I rented an apartment on a one-way street—each day on the way to my car I passed a sign that read End.

Clara E. Ronderos
Translated by Mary G. Berg

Gabriela didn’t have a lot of respect for Professor Millán. His esoteric assignments made the writing workshop a space that encouraged exaggeration and false prophecies.

Mannika Mishra

So far, she had seen only one person wearing sunglasses indoors.
The sky outside was stripped to brazen blue and inspired recklessness; grim forecasts for later in the day couldn’t possibly be right.

Joelle Lambert

In the springtime, the ants in the house get out of control. I lose sleep over it. I have tried so many things to rid my house of ants.

Lydia Armstrong

The very first time it happened, I was fifteen, walking across an overpass in the middle of the night on my way to see a boy.

Evelyn Martinez

Life or death? I am twenty-six years old, standing at the edge of a scenic overlook a few miles from Lake Arrowhead. Far below, the Inland Empire extends its freeway and housing tracts into the orange-gray haze.

Ivan Jozić
Translated by Marta Huber

Sometimes I travel alone and that’s all right; tonight, however that’s not the case. Here in the East, the night is born out of the winter’s pupil, the taxi driver’s heart, or something just as cold.