Archives

WHAT I DID FOR LOVE by Catherine Spino

June 9, 2025

I can’t remember his name so I will give him one. Devin. He was 32, blonde, sun kissed, and standing on a dock in the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were but if I had to guess, they were blue. I hit “heart” and a few hours later, I felt his “heart” back vibrate against my jeans. It was December 2014 and I was 21. Back then, the OKCupid app was clunky and I always gave out my cell because texting was easier. I gave Devin my number and his texts came in green on

LOOKING AND HURTING by Alice Rowena Wilson

June 5, 2025

In the bar, she stares at him constantly, which is embarrassing in and of itself, but also because she cannot seem to physically control it, and she knows his friends will notice (she somehow does not count herself in this body of people, although that is where she belongs; within this crowd, her desire isolates her, carves out a space of hot, silent shame), and she knows that they, his friends, will murmur to each other, that they will note her desperate, pathetic, puppy-dog presence, but she seems to have a physical impediment that means she can’t stop staring, and

CRUISE STORY by Aristotelis Nikolas Mochloulis

June 4, 2025

I was awake in what felt like an instant, a ray of sunlight splitting my head in half. Mom out of sight, I showered, redressed, packed my wet sheets into a bag, began to panic, and called her to see if I had it in me to tell her what was going on. In the few seconds between her picking up and my coldly replying, Where are you? I decided to give myself the benefit of the doubt until the second test. Outside the laundromat, I studied the manual, slid the swab deep into my nostrils, its tip into the

MY NAME IS JIM PARCHEESI OWNER OF JIM PARCHEESI’S AND I’VE WORN THE SAME PAIR OF SOCKS FOR 45 YEARS SO SUE ME by Dan Weaver

June 2, 2025

You’re gonna come in here into my place and tell me to change my socks you’re gonna tell me that? Get out of here with that horseshit. This is my place and these are my socks and I’m not changing them just because you don’t like that I’ve worn them these same ones for 45 years. I’m not here to do what anybody says to do I’ve earned it you see the fucking pictures on the walls of this place? There’s pictures of me with like several different celebrities ok? They came to my place here and they gave me

WHALE WATCHING by Kelly Dasta

May 30, 2025

My dead friend isn’t supposed to be on the whale watching tour. It’s a pale summer morning, the harbor glazed with fog. I’m standing on the boat’s upper deck directing tourists aboard, gesturing to empty seats, passing out pamphlets. And there she is, lined up behind a family of five. She’s wearing a navy windbreaker, jean shorts, and muddy white sneakers. Why are you here? I ask. You’re scared of the ocean. Only the Pacific, she says. The Atlantic is fine. I say, Okay, but don’t freak out the children. We jet off, gliding over the glass panes of the

WHISPERING GALLERY: AN INTERVIEW WITH WILL CORDEIRO by Rebecca Gransden

May 28, 2025

Will Cordeiro’s fiction unfurls a kindly finger and beckons you to follow an uncommon path. As you tramp along seldom visited trails, your mind wanders as much as your feet. You arrive at the peculiar, the disquieting and the mysterious, without a clue how you got there or even if you want to leave. With Whispering Gallery (DUMBO Press, 2024), Cordeiro invites entry to an off-kilter world, where those who disappear into the mist entrust their steps to the uncertain ground beneath them. I spoke to the author about this curious collection. Rebecca Gransden: Some people claim that time isn’t

MIKE TOPP by Mike Topp

May 27, 2025

TODAY Today a bully from my high school is coming by to beat me up one last time (he has cancer). AMERIKKKA Of course Amerikkka leads the league in serial killers. There are a great many serial killers in town right now—because of NYC’s favorable tax laws and enterprise zones and the big serial killer parade we have every year, and because in a lot of our restaurants serial killers eat free. A JOINER Here’s something you might not have known about me: I was a joiner in high school. Carbona Club, Whip-Its Society, Nutmeg Club, Friends of

POWERPOINT JESUS by Izzi Sneider

May 22, 2025

I found the file by accident. It was tucked between Q3BudgetProjections.pptx and TeamSalesSeminar_2021(final_FINAL2).pptx on the shared drive. Jesus.pptx Just like that. I clicked it out of curiosity. Or maybe boredom. It’s hard to tell the difference between the two when you spend the day in an office staring at spreadsheets that mean nothing to you. The file was empty. One blank white slide. No title. No bullet points. No formatting. Just a white void. A warmth emanated from the screen. I stared at it for a while. I bathed in its glow. My body slackened. My thoughts dulled to a

FALLOUT by Marta Regn

May 21, 2025

Every weekend we begged our mothers to drive us to the mall, to leave us at the arched entrance by the Red Robin, and not to look back. We pooled our money. Birthdays, summer chores, quarters from fluorescent plastic Easter eggs. We bought T-shirts emblazoned with the names of bands and bracelets shaped like penises, breasts, middle fingers. We wore our contraband to school under our jackets and swapped shirts while waiting for the buses. No other kids recognized the faces spread across our chests, and we liked it that way. When we stared at our navels, we tugged our

SEA MAIDENS by Ravi Mangla

May 20, 2025

Ever since her husband was hit by a municipal bus, Mrs. Atwal would spend her afternoons watching the hippos at the aquarium. Their fleetness of hoof belying their primordial size. At two o’clock, on the nose, the hippos were isolated in a separate part of the tank and the mermaid show would begin. Children crowded the double-paned glass. A drowsy piano tune was piped through the speakers. The mermaids emerged from some unknowable recess in the tank. Each time one of the mermaids waved at Mrs. Atwal, or otherwise made eye contact with her, she imagined a hippo breaking loose