Archives

HOUSE FLY by Megan Nichols

February 6, 2025

Superstition slipped in with the last of the September flies. My hands were full and I couldn’t get the door shut fast enough behind me. There was a clog in the bathroom sink where drain flies had nested. Something about my slowness made me wonder if we didn’t deserve it. Jake said to get hot vinegar if I was too damn scared of store bought bug killer. The sour smell drove him out all afternoon and when he came back he saw I had let the vinegar boil out. He headed upstairs with a bottle of bleach but found the

A BEETLE TRAPPED IN GLASS by Meghan Proulx

February 5, 2025

First, he’s packed and put on ice like a seabass. Then he’s put in a state of vitrification and becomes a non-crystalline amorphous solid like a beetle trapped in glass. Seeing him during this time is like visiting someone in a coma, except I can’t touch him because there’s a risk of shattering. For one month a year, his body is reheated and drained of all preservation liquid. This is when the science happens and I find out what it means for him to have donated his still-living body to science. There are educational posters about it on all the

YIELDING AS GLASS YIELDS TO FIRE: AN INTERVIEW WITH MANDIRA PATTNAIK by Rebecca Gransden

February 4, 2025

Shifting states. The novel-in-flash Glass/Fire (Querencia Press, 2024) exhibits the unfolding travails of girlhood, a reality adorned in rich contradiction and symbolism. Mandira Pattnaik’s sumptuous language carries forth a deep and sensuous meditation on life’s volatility. The wildness of nature’s forces at their most capricious lend an elemental intensity to fate. A dynamic and revealing exploration of growth, I talked to the author about the book. Rebecca Gransden: In the mood we were in, fire could be liquid, could be sand, or molten like lava, or flames, licking the last of us. You open the book with the above line.

REPOTTING by Ona Akinde

February 3, 2025

1 at the airport in lagos, we find out my bags are overweight. it doesn’t surprise me. how was I supposed to fit years of my life into two 23kg suitcases? I buy an overpriced ghana-must-go bag to replace the heavier suitcase so I have more room for my things but my bags are still overweight. my mother is frantic as we pack and unpack, and I decide what else to let go of. “are you sure you don’t need this? the dress is nice on you,” she asks as I hand her another item of clothing to take back

she transmogrified in my bed by Rylie Farr

January 27, 2025

My girlfriend has started a new regiment this week. She told me after coming home yesterday from work. Supposedly, this is supposed to help her achieve her “ideal form.” Every night now she is supposed to take these fluorescent green pills with her dinner. I don’t mind it too much. She becomes so sleepy afterwards, so I tuck her in our bed before sitting out on the couch for a couple of hours. Our flat is now quieter than usual. It seems the side effects are starting to take place in her body. This morning, she woke up before me

WANTED: DANCE PARTNER by Brian Benson

January 25, 2025

It’s late afternoon, day five million of this insatiable year, and I’m melting into an overstuffed chair, doing whatever I’m doing on my computer—checking email, collecting fun facts about my father’s mortality, finding new things to be ashamed of—when suddenly I hear a sound like a leaking balloon and I glance up and there he is, the dog I’ve married into owning, lying belly up on the couch, looking like he was dropped from a helicopter and landed comfortably on his back. Paws to the sky, tongue lolling from his mouth. He’s taking me in with upside-down eyes, waiting to

BOLOGNA by Sean Hayes

January 24, 2025

We stood on top of our worlds as we knew them. The fall could kill us. Or worse. All part of the thrill. Henny, Walsh, and I were on the last level of scaffolding wrapped around the Bronson Windmill in Fairfield. We were heading into our senior year at Greenfield College Preparatory School. If you think we had on boat shoes judging from the last sentence, you’re wrong. Only Henny and I had on boat shoes. Walsh wore oversized flipflops with bottle openers on the soles. We sat down, dangling our feet over the edge of the scaffolding, swinging them

An Interview with Jeffery Renard Allen by Kenny Meyer

January 23, 2025

I was introduced to Jeffery Renard Allen’s brilliant short story collection, Fat Time (Greywolf Press, 2023), by Chaya Bhuvaneswar (prize winning author of Dancing Elephants). At the time I was a participant in her short story class. She made a habit of urging me to get out of my reading rut and explore the work of writers from divergent cultural backgrounds. Chaya had plenty of good things to say about Allen’s Fat Time, so I bought a copy. I should explain that I come from the opposite end of the cultural universe from Mr. Allen and the characters he portrays.

TEENAGED GIRL GROWS ANTENNA IN SCHOOL BATHROOM STALL #3 by Suzanne Richardson

January 22, 2025

I always thought I was a science project. Maybe all girls are. Today I listen too hard and become a sound reflector, sound detective. I click my converse and my head splits like Zeus. Through my skull my alloy daughter emerges. She is like me but picks up gossip frequencies. Particular metal. Flagellum and scape. Dipoles and cables. A sci-fi fascinator for prom. Now more radio than girl. I lean, press, pick up the waves of other girls. Someone said the trees were moving, but it was the world. Silence does not exist here on the moon, in this girls

CHARLENE ELSBY RECOMMENDS: Books from the Void

January 21, 2025

Since I went to VoidCon 2023, I’ve pretty much been catching up on the books I acquired there. And the problem only got worse after VoidCon 2024. Organized by Evan Dean Shelton and Edwin Callihan, VoidCon is a curated convention for weird fiction and weird horror, including literature, art and music. Art’s that, like, “wouldn’t it be nice if it found commercial success” but nobody’s expecting it to. The void aesthetic is irreverent and fun while dark and existentially horrid, and militantly encourages the participation of diverse voices on their own terms. So as an artificial way of imposing order