Archives

GHOST by Alexandra M. Matthews

November 12, 2019

I rode the roller coasters again today. I called out sick from work, ate a small breakfast. I pulled my hair back in a tight braid so it wouldn’t whip me in the face on sharp turns. The park was empty. As long as I didn’t faint or vomit, there was no limit on how many times I could ride the same roller coaster. I nodded to the attendants and they sent me around once more. My grandfather used to say that roller coasters jumble the insides, cause nose bleeds. Enough scrambling and a person would come off the ride

GLOVES by R.S. Powers

November 11, 2019

He had a dream, he says, about the rest of their lives on another planet rich with tech indistinguishable from magic. On his back, he holds his hands toward the ceiling, the cusp of dawn filling their disheveled bedroom, and describes jazz hands-ing away the deep gulf of scar tissue rippling down her body’s left side, from scalp to ankle, where the asphalt carried away almost everything. He was wearing these iridescent gloves that could remodel skin like wet clay. They could afford them because their parents (in the dream) were dead and left them money. He rolls back over.

DURING THE YEAR OF RAPID WEIGHT LOSS, I BECOME UNCHARACTERISTICALLY EXHIBITIONISTIC by Amy Kiger-Williams

November 10, 2019

I’d like you to really look at me. You will see less of me that you would have seen before, but now I will let you look longer. This is where the inherent irony lies. As a consequence, you’ll see more of me than you ever would have before. Undressing in front of a stranger is a vulnerable thing. Your scars, your roundness, your concavity: everything that was never up for discussion before is now fair game. Bikini tops, wife beaters, hip huggers: these are all I wear anymore. The tighter, the better. Less is more. Still, there is a

LENA by Divya Iyer

November 8, 2019

I want this to be honest in a way that makes empires shake. I need to text Lena back, and if I do text Lena back with the right words, the ones that hum and whimper and shake and do not cajole (under any circumstances), I know what I would say. The crux of it is that, no, I wasn’t crucified and, yeah, I can’t tell sparkling water from holy water. I would tell Lena about the way loneliness grew inside me, a big sprawling thing, reaching inside for empty spaces, seeping in like ink on blotting paper, like all

THE PENCIL TEST by Grace Loh Prasad

November 5, 2019

I once dated a Famous Author—someone you might have heard of. He’d written half a dozen nonfiction books by the time I met him at a writers conference, and had recently published a surprise bestseller that was made into a movie. He’d lived and traveled all over the world as a journalist and was on the masthead of a venerable magazine. The Famous Author was teaching a class on how to write and sell travel stories, which seemed like a good entry point for my first-person writing about Taiwan. After the conference I emailed him to introduce myself and mentioned

VIEWS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS by Frank Jackson

November 4, 2019

The couple found a spot on a beach with no one in front of them. Sunset was an hour away. She pulled out her phone and scanned the view. He grabbed a couple of beers, opened his own and started chugging. “Hey Babe, how’s it looking?” “Oh my God, it’s going to be perfect.” “A gorgeous sunset post at the end of summer. I can feel it — this one’s gonna blow up for me.” “Well I was going to post it on my feed.” “Well we can’t both post the same picture at the same location. People will know

A HOME by Sasha Tandlich

November 3, 2019

Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me! She covers her face. There’s nobody there but the cat. The cat yells, jumps at something. See, it’s not just the cat. There are also the ants crawling in a line, stampeding through the too-big crack under the front door. She leans forward. Creak. The chair moves with her, rocking forward as rocking chairs do. This chair didn’t always live here. No. She didn’t always live here, either. There was the house with the porch. The house with the porch and the rocking chair being pushed forward and back by the wind.

ON LOCATION by Corey Miller

November 2, 2019

Actor Wanted I’m sitting on the 22” x 14” x 9” life I just purchased, about to board in Blueberry Maine. Stickers of “Fragile” and “Contents Known To Cause Cancer In The State Of California,” label what’s left of me: clothes, a deck of cards, spare change, and my photo album. Every American has been to the Salty Dog Café and wears this damn shirt you bought me to blend in. The train brings an oily coal in the air. My mind returns to working the factory. I can see the machine press opening then crushing, waiting for me to

DEAD FLOWERS by Rasmenia Massoud

November 1, 2019

We didn’t know how to talk to Troy’s new girl. Then again, we didn’t know how to talk to the last one, either. Sunny, giggling girls flocked around him, their shiny polished nails drawn to his brown arms and the thick blond waves of hair that touched his shoulders. Things were that way. People came and went. Stuck together like it was life and death in one moment, an almost forgotten odd character in a funny anecdote the next. To a girl who’d had a few and met Troy for the first time, it might’ve seemed as if he’d been

THE HORSES, THE HORSES by John Torrance (Megan Pillow)

October 30, 2019

All in all, it’s a good place to stop for the night. There’s little work to be done and a beauty of a view: a tranquil lake at the bottom of a grassy hill, lush and electric green beneath the early evening sun. No other cattle to crowd them. After they put up tents, perhaps a bit of play to shake off the day’s ride: a tune on Morton’s banjo. Then grass for the cattle and grub for the men: canned beans, or maybe a rabbit that’s a touch too slow, something that makes the belly full without turning it.