The Best Day of Her Life

(CW: forced marriage) Sumitra Singam Nadaswaram blaring in her ear. Mridangam beat pounding in her chest. Sanskrit verses cracking like thunder. Petals […]

Hunger

Bayveen O’Connell After the harvest moon, the Famine Grave yawns open and scores of corpses clamber onto the red carpet of Japanese […]

Little Bird

DW McKinney The mother calls her daughter Little Bird for the golden tufts atop her head and the way she mimics the […]

The Closet

Georgia Bellas We rattle the door without a doorknob. We press against its wood, damp and swollen in the frame, but it […]

Wolf Spiders Hunt in Packs

Cole Beauchamp               Not all spiders catch their prey in webs. We learned this on the longest day of the year.               […]

He Her Tollund Man, She Jutland Girl

Karen Walker The Gods took Papa. So where is spring? Winter drips from the thatch. He was a good papa, a careful weaver […]

Mint Sauce

Frances Gapper               We invite Auntie to tea. Hiding our lips behind flowery teacups, we peep at her. She is lamb chops, […]

The Sisters Find a Use for That Electric Carving Knife Mother Demanded Last Christmas and Never Even Unwrapped

S A Greene               Judith serves herself both of Mother’s breasts without consulting.               ‘An arm for me, please.’ says Emma. ‘Actually, […]

Whelk

Frances Gapper Now it’s not safe to go out, they order bottles of guaranteed healthy air and crave injections of fresh young […]

Torque

Marie Little Jennifer carefully tightens the last tiny wingnut, a turn for a word: serendipity, coruscate, hullabaloo.  The press is beginning to […]

Special Victims

Colleen Kearney Rich Pam doesn’t plan to lie. It just slips out. Imagined life made real. The girl at work, her face […]

Expressions of Joy

Nathan Xie               He exclaims things like nodders, or yagoo, or hrmhrm, and the first time folks ask him what he means, […]

After She’d Gone

Cath Barton               He was here the next morning, my brother. Sitting at my kitchen table, spooning marmalade onto his toast.               […]

Music Lesson

Anthony D’Aries Don’t tell your four-year-old son how Marvin Gaye died. Unless you want to answer questions about fathers and guns and […]

The Deaths

Ann Gelder               At first there were three deaths: two big deaths and a small death. These deaths were well-mannered. They always […]

Ferris Wheel

Ashley Espinoza My dad shows me an entire photo album of my mom pregnant with me. It’s weird, my dad has never […]

Grandmother’s Kitchen

Madeleine Pelletier Grandmother’s kitchen is a gathering place. Women turn their masks inside out, cluster round cooking pots, and offer prayers to […]

Anderson Shelter

Edward Barnfield In the morning, there’s a hole where the house used to be. The kitchen, where we drank tea and talked […]

Countess Herzinga’s Alchemy

Janna Miller               Countess Herzinga was the first to study the transmutable properties of eggshells as applied to light and sound. Her […]

No Matter How Much Time Has Passed, Some Houses Don’t Die

Janna Miller Nazi ghost houses roam the countryside, setting up bars and brothels. Come in, come in, they say. You do not […]

Homecoming

Anne Daly A turlough blooms each winter at the bottom of our road. It used to be my road, when I was […]

Cold Comfort

Laura Pike               I lie in bed, shivering in cold sheets, waiting for the nightly crumb of her affections in an otherwise […]

False Flat

Caroline Gonda It’s a thing in cycling, apparently, an incline you don’t recognise as one because it’s not that steep so you […]

The Things Sally Hardesty’s Best Friend, Pam, Never Speaks Of (CW: body horror)

Jan Stinchcomb               What it’s like to be the first, instead of the final, girl.               How it feels when your ass, […]

The Side Show of Birth

Amy Barnes               I give birth to the longest baby ever on the longest day of the year. 144 inches. A gross […]

Clothesline Number 9

Amy Barnes               The sun dries my paintings where Mama can’t see me. I’m supposed to be doing chores but instead I’m […]

Babydoll

Sarah Jones               A moment of silence, please, for my missing left breast. For the spreading lumps bubbling through me. Ripping me […]

Long After the Long Ride into the Sunset

Marvin Shackelford First thing in the morning I draw a blue mark in the shallow dimple of my cheek, so near my […]

Two Needles, One Dog

Kev Thomas I asked to see the vet. I was holding Gaia in my arms. She was wrapped in my school coat, […]

Post Modern

A. Joseph Black Christ, he’s still there. I lean back out of view and catch the curtain with my shoulder. It sways […]

Scarlett’s Got a Gun

Fiona McKay Scarlett’s got a gun. Moves on alcohol-soft legs through a glass room, louring shadows, candlestick-high. Feels no pain, plant-pot rammed, […]

They Were Boiling Their Clothes

Rodrigo Duran               They were boiling their clothes.               They were in the kitchen wearing raincoats, but the true outfits swirled in […]

Night Fishers

Merridawn Duckler Water against the pier like a throat click. The churned blanket of our childhood bed. Lines curve back and fly […]

Seed, Root, Shoot

James Montgomery Soon enough, there’ll be time for twelve red roses. A carnation wrist corsage. Homemade Christmas wreaths hung from her own […]

Museum Piece

Becky May They’d hung Monet’s ‘Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond’ across the white expanse of wall in the end room, […]

The Weeping Woman

Claire Hampton               I watch the man at the table gnawing his dirty fingernails, pungent sweat darkening the underarms of his denim […]

Sorry For What I Said When We Were Putting Up the Tent

Helen Gordon It was the smell, shaken out with the crisped corpses of last summer’s earwigs; musty, with a tang of mould […]

Brand-new Blue Sponge to Clean Up After a Memorable Dinner for Two

S.A. Greene The man is sitting facing the window. The woman sits down, facing the man. The man has assembled the salad. […]

The Devil You Know (TW: Abuse)

Ariel M. Goldenthal Editorial note from Sara Siddiqui: In very few words, Ariel shows us the day-to-day, minute-to-minute struggle of an almost-twelve-year-old […]

Two Micros: A Heart That Does Not Beat and You Will Never Need to Walk Again

Yunya Yang Editor’s Note from Sudha Balagopal: Yunya Yang delivers her signature punches in these two micros. There are descriptions of other […]

It Pulls You Under

Laila Amado The season of the fogs brings heat and languor to this island lost in the middle of the sea. Everything […]

Panache

T.L. Sherwood The thinness of the envelope puzzles me. Harris has sent a slender, white, unusual feather. Days later, an email explains […]

Dream Baby

Max Hipp Shake your heart like a half-pint of milk, blow in it, put it back in. It’s another night of playing […]

The Soft Th

Rosaleen Lynch My English teacher counted my ‘you knows’ during a debate and the soft ‘th’ that made ‘dis’ out of ‘this’ […]

Double universe

Francine Witte There are forests, there are planets, there is the moon. In this universe, you are nothing but a speckity spec. […]

He May Be Human, But I Am Not Divine

Rachel O’Cleary He still wants me to finish first, like before. Sometimes he stops himself so that I can. Sidles up to […]

Cornered

Liz Churchill He’s racing to catch up with his mum when he spots leopard skin between the wheelie-bins. It’s well past his […]

Driven Home

Rob McIvor Alice stops the car in a quiet spot, a service road behind the Multiplex. The last film ended an hour […]

The Other Side of Me

Helen Chambers               A confident stranger with newly-cropped hair stares back at me in the mirror. Does she feel lucky, I wonder? […]

Sweet, Sour, Bitter, Salt

Fiona J. Mackintosh In the crouch of twilight, he hums a single tuneless note under the droop of the rhododendrons. From beyond […]