DADS ON DECK by Garrett Stack
Cal gazes up in adoration, face illuminated in the glow of outdated technology, and tears stream down his face.
BIG GULP by Catherine Chiarella Domonkos
You hook up with Danny in a boys’ room stall after rock band practice the day he tells you when you hold the mike close to your lips it’s like you’re going down on it.
CLUCK LIKE A CHICKEN by Sonia Alejandra Rodríguez
If this wasn’t serious business, you’d laugh your butt off because it looks like the chicken is wearing lipstick and the shine on its feathers makes you think of gel on jet black hair.
AT THE WELL by Nathan Grover
Perhaps by now they weren’t the most well-adjusted people they’d ever been. Perhaps by now they’d become, even to themselves, a little strange.
SLINGER JESUS by J M F Casey
He held the baggy towards me, flexing its mouth, wafting the pungent vapours. It was barely a ‘teenth, not worth 30, but I bought it.
CIAO, TRIESTE by Christine Kwon
The screaming and kissing seem to come straight from the id, from the desire to suck out a man’s soul and leave him a desiccated shell.
LOVE IS A HOT STOVE YOUR HEART KEEPS TOUCHING by Jeanine Skowronski
And so, you are here, you are here, you are waiting, frost-bitten and sun-stroked; you are waiting for a warmth that you think, that you know, that you think that you know now will never come.
THE SWAMP PALACE by Jake Lancaster
There’s a boardwalk to the water through the swamp and the swamp is full of white birds on skinny orange legs and there are plastic bags everywhere and Dew bottles and it smells like we’re in a Roman candle fizzing out—that smell, what do you call that?
THE TORTOISE AND HIS PROBLEMS by Rodrigo Restrepo Montoya and Wes Holtermann
Hours spent nude on plinths in those drafty rooms, and only one painting had ever done him justice.
THE PROMENADE EXPRESS by Lauren Baker
On bad days, I fantasized about taking a sledgehammer to the train. I knew where the security cameras were (and weren’t).