Archives

AT THE POLICE STATION, WITH SKETCH ARTIST by Alana Mohamed

December 4, 2020

The most startling thing about him was the realization that he must have been beautiful when he was younger. I like to look into people’s faces and imagine them other ways: older, younger, dying, terrified, on the brink of extreme cruelty. This man did not look capable of cruelty, though it was dark out and difficult to tell. He seemed like a good man who had grown up and seen life turn in on itself and now he was in a hard way, with such a striking face and such deep lines. It was a foggy Tuesday and I was

SHOSTAKOVICH’S THIRD FUGUE by Derick Dupre

December 2, 2020

Dmitri finds himself on a deep south farmhouse tour. He’s not sure of how events have contrived to bring him there. The last thing he remembers is packing a bag, he was folding clothes and packing them, though he’d be at a loss to say where he was originally going or why. Outside the heat is murderous. While walking down a wide hall behind an oblivious but garrulous guide, Dmitri’s distracted by the virtuosity inherent in the hand that made a certain crown moulding, stops to admire it, fails to take his meds as he should every day at this

RESTORATION by Myna Chang

November 30, 2020

Nobody tells her how to remove her father’s blood, how to cleanse the pools and spatters of a life stolen. The county sheriff doesn’t warn her about the stickiness, or how very much of it there is, puddled on the floor between the cash register and the chicken feed. He doesn’t tell her about the crust that will form if she puts off cleaning until the day after the funeral. No one helps her call the professional crime scene cleaners in the city. Their phonebook advertisement mentions special equipment and emotional distance. They promise ‘restoration’ — but she is outside

MY MOM TOLD ME TO EAT TINY SANDWICHES by Dough Mahoney

November 25, 2020

my mom took a picture of me walking to the car. she took a picture of me in the car. we drove towards eatonton, georgia. i wanted to vape but couldn’t. or i could, but it would ruin the trip. i didn’t vape. i read a few pages from black jacobins. i asked how long the drive was going to take. five hours, my dad said. i thought he was joking. i asked if he was joking. he said he wasn’t joking. five hours isn’t too long, i said. i drank coffee from a thermos. i finished the coffee. i

PERSUASIVE ESSAY ON WHY MY UNCLE JOE SHOULD NOT GO TO PRISON by Kevin M. Kearney

November 23, 2020

MAMÁ’S MORNING by Moisés R. Delgado

November 20, 2020

Mamá kept her morning in the bathtub. But why a morning, I once asked, why not instead call her moons a night? Or a waxing? Or why not simply call them moons? Without a moon, mamá said, the night would be dark—my moons are anything but dark. But to be a morning, mamá said, wouldn’t you give anything to be a morning—to even be one panel of light? I wish I could have been more like mamá. I know she prayed the same. When she called me her cielo we both knew which sky she meant. On what would be

LOW VISIBILITY by Jillian Luft

November 18, 2020

We’re in a blizzard, the sheer white of it haloing our Nissan Maxima as we careen across the northeast interstate, miles and miles away from the tropical green swelter of our backyard, the cicada buzz of Florida. Starting somewhere in New Jersey, the weather blots out the roads, swallows exit signs, engulfs my parents, younger brother and me in its silent magic. Our burgundy sedan skidding slightly as our mouths open in unison to the light falling soundlessly outside. For the first time in our lives, we feel like the lucky ones. Sole witnesses to a quiet miracle, a record-breaking

INTERVIEW WITH SIMON HAN with Taylor Hickney

November 17, 2020

Simon Han, an Asian-American writer whose critically acclaimed debut novel, Nights When Nothing Happened, comes out on November 17th, took the time to speak to me about growing up as an immigrant in Plano—a suburb of Dallas, Texas—the racism of the American Dream, his craft decisions, and more. *** Taylor Hickney: To me this novel is about loneliness, families, the immigrant experience in America and the racism that goes along with it, the facades of the suburbs, and more. Where did the kernel of this story come from? How long did it take you to nurture it until it became what

C by Lisa Lerma Weber

November 16, 2020

It was another sweltering summer night in our godforsaken little town, the odor of cow dung and hay heavy in the air. My maroon Ford Escort was sitting in a dimly lit corner of the McDonald’s parking lot, a bunch of misfits standing around it, trying to figure out what trouble to get into. You and I were lying in the trunk next to a pile of scratched and scuffed skateboards. I turned towards you and smiled. You smiled back. You were always smiling, something I liked about you. We leaned into each other, our lips meeting for a brief

RETURN TO PLANET CLOWN by Nathan Hoil

November 13, 2020

Clowns vomit clown food. Clowns vomit anything dead that they find in the neighbor’s pool. I am looking so sharp I am made out of scissors. I do not remember a happier day. The lungs in my stomach are hungry for air but I go back in the house and try not to think about all the dead clowns in my yard. Not even my loved ones love me. “You’re too cute,” I say to a clown moments before they light me on fire. I always thought I would live to see my own ghost. The horizon is a drug