Fiction

WHATEVER by Emma Estridge

October 18, 2023

She emails me a PDF of instructions. The first is Learn to sit quietly with yourself. I feel that we have already skipped a step.

HEATERS by Brett Biebel

October 11, 2023

There was a fence, and there were holes in it, and she looked like a lizard sometimes, a shitload of speed coiled inside some slender frame.

THREE by Amanda Gersh

October 4, 2023

I used to say I couldn’t travel because I didn’t have the time, but now I’ve got all the time in the world because the world isn’t using it.

PORCELAIN by Nicholas Claro

September 27, 2023

The couch is more of a loveseat. It hardly seats the two of us. On it is the pillow and blanket I’ve been using. This is the longest conversation we’ve had in over a week.

Now that your precious jackfruit is out in the world, latch the angel onto your body and let nature take its course. She held her jackfruit to her breast, to her arms, her neck, rubbed it against herself until she was raw.

HOBBIES by Robbie Herbst

August 30, 2023

She’d say that it’s not enough for a man to create a life; he must sustain it. Protect it. Sufficiency means safety. It means contingencies. It means insurance.

IF SHE WERE AN ANIMAL by Cameron Darc

August 28, 2023

He fondles a piece of charcoal and looks at me before touching the paper. The line makes a limp imitation of a spine. A nose appears.

COMPANY MAN by Jeff Karr

August 23, 2023

The lord’s light is a fathomless null. Sometimes you’re afforded a glimpse and it’s a tunnel on the other side of which you crawl on the accordioned car’s ceiling.

SMOKE AND FISH by Uyen P. Dang

August 21, 2023

At first everyone blamed the smoke on the war, then the steel plant, and, finally, the water. But Ong Hai says it’s not water but grief at the bottom of the sea.

AT THE VERY CENTER OF YOU IS NOTHING by Alice M.

August 16, 2023

The masks were thin, pliable. They attached to her skin, seamless. They emoted for her, always appropriate, guaranteed to fetch the reaction she wanted.