Archives

THREE MICRO FICTION PIECES by Cressida Blake Roe

November 15, 2021

Apocalypse Needs a More Exciting Plural Form Proposition One: The plural form of apocalypse isn’t nuclear fallout, environmental degradation, contagions, Horseman, acts of God, or St John’s Revelations. Instead, it sounds more like a woman fleeing in broken counterpoint to the screech of subway brakes and takes the shape of a fist slamming through a wall two inches from a child’s head: finales too small for the tabloid headlines, too colossal for folding away between pages, out of sight. *** The train didn’t stop in time. They said she didn’t mean to die. Her husband thought, in front-page letters three

YOU’RE INVITED TO MY MENOPAUSE BALL by Susan Hatters Friedman

November 14, 2021

The Debut Ball for Invisibility The family of _____________ (enter name of menopausal woman here) __ request the honour of your company at the Menopause Ball, in honour of her 51st birthday, to celebrate the “next phase” of her life. You attended her Debutante Ball when she was “coming out” to be pursued. Now, in Grandest Blue-Blood Tradition of the Magnificent Menopause Balls of yore—for the next rite of passage, she is “going back in.” Help ___________ celebrate this glorious time in her life, when she no longer needs birth control, Tampax, or responses to cat-calls. Join us as we

MICHAEL SEYMOUR INSOMNIAC by Michael Seymour Blake

November 13, 2021

JOE-DOG by Michael Haller

November 12, 2021

Joe was helping his ex-girlfriend Claire move out of her apartment (“the apartment where I grew as a person more than my previous four apartments”) while simultaneously helping his recycled girlfriend Lori move into the same apartment. (“Fucking creepy, I’m disinfecting this place when she’s gone.”) The apartment was a one-bedroom in trashy-trendy North Cumminsville, a blighted warehouse district in one of the mid-sized Ohio cities beginning with the letter C (not Canton, not Chillicothe, not Coshocton). Claire could no longer afford the rent in NC due to unpaid bills and the troubles they bring, and middleman Joe, a friend

TANKERS by Mackenzie Moore

November 11, 2021

I thought my grief would come out like my mother dumps out her purse. If you’ve ever seen that woman turn over her tote bag, it’s like the Niagara of tidbits. You need a poncho just to block the crumbs. Everything comes spilling out into a big old pile: Armani lipstick that costs more than my phone bill; floss picks, Altoids, crinkled napkins with phone numbers of networking colleagues; one wooden “eco spork” used, but wiped clean on one of the aforementioned crinkled napkins. It’s an absolute mess but my god what a sight to see. That’s not what happened.

IF YOU CAN, LISTEN by Jake McAuliffe

November 10, 2021

First off, endings are quiet. As something/somelove dies, a spacetime wound will appear to you and crickets will come out. They will flood your ears and tickle your canals like cotton. Some cheeky crickety fucks are going to use your body as a musical instrument. This is normal. I think every bone and pipe inside the human body was placed on purpose. You may have heard the theory of “intelligent design” but try this: crickets frisking your insides for anything that can shake the air. That’s music, baby. And that’s how tinnitus comes about. It’s insects. It’s our slow air

I WAS SO READY TO BE ENDURED: A REVIEW OF LAURA THEOBALD’S SALAD DAYS by Evan Williams

November 9, 2021

Laura Theobald opens her new collection Salad Days with an epigraph from Antony and Cleopatra. Fitting. This book is an acerbic wedding, rejoicing in the union of our worst impulses and their natural consequences. Everyone is dressed to celebrate, except we’re alone. So, so alone. To be forthright, I had no idea what to make of Salad Days initially. I read the epigraph and thought, “Ah, destructive love, imperial curiosity.” I read the index, where I found the book split into seven spectacularly-titled sections: Waves of Confusion, Art for the Afterlife, Moon Unit, Future Moods, Double Fantasy, Sour Times, and

THE STOAT by Nick Perilli

November 8, 2021

We don’t know where the hole in the basement of our house goes, only that it’s far deeper than it looks. Our pet stoat made it last year before disappearing into it. She was always digging—into our wood floors, our garden, our couches, and pantries—but this hole was her masterpiece. The white fur on her belly darkened with dirt over time. Since the day we brought the stoat home, she didn’t pay us any mind; she only had time for digging. She escaped from her cage whenever we weren’t looking, and we admit we rarely looked. Whatever the stoat was

SUN IS MISSING by Kion You

November 7, 2021

The Korean rice weevil is a felicitous insect, bent on one simple task: scaling my bedroom walls. Tonight I see three but sometimes there are as many as ten. The thrill must be similar to that of free solo climbing, but when the weevil falls it gets back up and tries again—the hard-shelled advantage. After dinner I lie in bed, which is a mat on the ground. One weevil wordlessly falls onto my blanket. It lands on its back and its legs flail like a pit of eels. After gathering itself, the weevil plants its left anterior leg onto the

MOZZARELLA by Megan Navarro Conley

November 6, 2021

After they drown and bloat with water, white people look like mozzarella cheese. Not the shredded kind in resealable bags, but the smooth spherical cheese in the little wet bags near the deli counter. Sometimes I buy this cheese from Trader Joe’s because plucking it off the refrigerated shelf makes me feel fancy. I like to turn it over in my hands, cup it in my palm while waiting in line. I learn this fact about white people and cheese while standing in a river. I am nineteen, and I still think I’m going to be a doctor. The director