Fiction

FAILURE TO BREATHE by Emily Withnall

June 17, 2020

The diaphragm wheezed and gasped. It was a broken accordion and with each push, the squeaking and squawking that emerged were evidence that it should surrender. There was no hope and what’s more, the attempts were painful—and embarrassing. The diaphragm felt defeated. This was an old, familiar feeling. It had never lived up to its full capacity, but over the years, awkward swimming lessons and less awkward singing lessons had strengthened it. The diaphragm knew what it was like to be useful and strong and to provide the satisfying, deep inhale and long sustained exhale. It was capable and even

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION by Zac Smith

June 15, 2020

Emo Phillips stands on a train. He thinks about all the fucked-up people he knows and wonders if people think he’s as fucked-up as he thinks other people are. The train conductor/engineer/driver person clicks on the intercom and thanks everyone for riding the train. Emo Phillips feels like he has never been thanked for riding public transportation. “Hey, am I fucked-up?” Emo Phillips asks. “What,” says Dan Brown. Dan Brown is looking at an advertisement for furniture. The train conductor/engineer/driver person clicks on the intercom and apologizes for the slow pace of the train. Emo Phillips takes off his mittens.

EVERYTHING ELSE IS JUST EXPOSITION by Gauraa Shekhar

June 14, 2020

Carefully coded a fake Myspace account for Joel Madden—copied the URL from his skull-and-crossbones profile, pasted it into a Layout Stealer, added Steve Aoki and Junior Sanchez to my Top 8 Sent myself love letters from the account Showed off love letters from “Joel Madden” at band practice Threw some antihistamine pills from the medicine cabinet into a zip-lock bag. Kept the pills in the back of my school locker to feel beautiful and bad like Winona Ryder and the disaster girls on TV Once, during a middle school lunchbreak, made an elaborate display of secretly spooning a home-cooked meal

THE PAIN WE DON’T TALK ABOUT by Amina Frances

June 13, 2020

I was six years old when my mother strapped me into the buggy of her bicycle and steered us both into oncoming traffic on the stretch of road behind the Mulberry Street house. A teen driver swerved and clipped us at fifteen miles an hour. I’ve had a raging pain at the center of my back ever since. My father wrote off the accident as another one of my mother’s spells—silly little things—as if they were nothing more than temporary lapses in judgement. Maybe they were. Then again, maybe they weren’t. My Aunt May always said the woman had a

EVERYTHING I’VE LEARNT FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND by Rick White

June 12, 2020

1 The vicar is an old friend of your mother. You don’t like him. When I ask why you say, “He didn’t give me an orange when I was little.” The orange represents the world; the candle is Jesus, “The Light of the World.” The toothpicks with sweets on them are the four seasons (of course). I have so many questions but I don’t ask, lest I burst into flames. “I like the liquorice all-sorts,” you say, as you pop one in your mouth. 2 I’ve always had a stutter, though I’ve learnt to control it over time. Whenever I

THE FIRST TIME I WATCHED PORN by Tyler Dempsey

June 11, 2020

In sixth grade (1997), my friend Tom invited me to church because I was a heathen and poor. (We drifted when he got really into drugs later, but from ages 11 to 14, we were close.) Because my mom worked—Dad vanished in 1990, returned for three days in 2014, and then vanished again—and I lived too far from school to ride the bus, what started as walking with Tom to church together on Wednesdays after school grew into going to Tom’s house weekdays until my mom got off work. Tom and I practiced kickflips in the driveway for an hour,

THE WITCH IS DEAD by Katherine Gleason

June 11, 2020

Jamey sprawls across the sofa. I place the box of Ding Dongs on the coffee table, and she laughs. “You remember,” I say. “Of course,” she says. “Mom loved those.” “And pretended she didn’t. We need coffee.” I slip into my galley kitchen and mix a few grams of a fruity Ethiopian with the usual beans. The blueberry overtones will blunt the waxiness of the chocolate. Cups in one hand, French press in the other, I trip over the cat, fall to one knee and, fists closed tight, stop myself with elbows planted on the back of the couch. Jamey

THE CORRECT HANGING OF GAME BIRDS by Rosie Garland

June 10, 2020

Rostrum Select old, wild birds. Beware harsh beaks, horned spurs, claws toughened by years of defiance. Pierce the beak. Hang by the neck, the feet. Each man has his taste. Hook and hang them long enough to conquer disobedience. Pectoral girdle Keep them in the dark. Convert the cellar into a hanging room: a stamped dirt floor to absorb the moisture they shrug off, dense walls to absorb sound. Keep your birds separate. Even when dead, their warmth communicates from breast to breast, stirring discord. Syrinx Permit yourself the luxury of appreciation. This bird is yours, now. Dawdle on the

BABY DINGO by Emily Harrison

June 7, 2020

Boy finds Baby Dingo in the swell of the high noon heat. He waits for any signs of Adult Dingo, adjusting the too-big-for-his-head trucker cap. At home, Grandad is snoring heavy on the sofa. Boy likes to wander off on weekends. He wants to be a great adventurer. Maybe today he is. He checks his watch, surveys the dust bowl surroundings. The nowhere town below. Baby Dingo clambers across Boy’s lap and pushes its nose into the sweaty creases of his knees and armpits, licking the salt. There is no sign of Adult Dingo. Boy pulls Baby Dingo up and

SPAWN by Isabelle Correa

June 6, 2020

I was a thing among other things in the hazy scene of his bedroom after shotgunning a beer for the first time. I remember the red pocket knife and the aluminum bending into itself to make room for the blade so that the hole I pressed my mouth to was an inverted flower. I remember finishing first. I remember finding his room and collapsing on the bed in the wrong direction, my legs where his head would go, my bare feet propped against the wall on the bottom of a poster for an alien movie I’d never seen, my toes