Fiction

A NOTE TO YOKO OGAWA by Michael Farfel

February 21, 2020

a note to Yoko Ogawa, I think that others might say you make key lime pie like all other confections. You pick the fruit—found in trees and sometimes pockets—and you open it and line it up and chop. It takes patience, of course, to form the pastry dough and fold it out and fill it up. I found a recipe, in the back pages of your books, a sort of misdirection in the language and the wording. A few drops of this, a subtle push and an open door. A room revealed. A kitchen and a stove. The fruit is

BEACH HOUSE by Jenny Stalter

February 20, 2020

Our house faces neither east nor west and sits in shadow. The tiny green house with the too much wicker. The tinted glass dishes full of seashells and tapestries accented with smooth beach glass. Oil paintings of seagulls. Mom really went for the beach look. Most people acquire a life over a lifetime, but it’s like she stopped in 1986. Stopped making a home, stopped making herself. The house smells like sour sweat and coconut rum. Mom, drunk on the couch as a permanent fixture, her robe hanging off the sofa, mouth open. I place a pillow under her head

SUBFLOOR by Jason Fox

February 16, 2020

Your refrigerator is yawning. It spills an egg-yellow rectangle on the floor. A ticking clock somewhere beyond. Then the fridge door closes and seals itself with a magnetic kiss. Plum dawn darkness washes in. You barefoot-shuffle through a current of cold air. Past your trash can and over some spilled coffee grounds that stick to your feet. It starts in this good morning darkness. First, a warmth coming from below the floorboards. Not possible. This carriage house, which is more a renovated barn, was built in 1880. It has only earth beneath the floors. No basement, no crawl space, just

CHEATER by Norris Eppes

February 15, 2020

I go there to ask why I go there. I go there to pick up trash from the sand. In the sand, I draw a heart with my toe. My initial. My wife’s initial. The initial of our shared last name. Then, I make two footprints beside it and let the incoming tide bury my feet. An elderly couple walks toward me along the hard sand. I do not want to talk. They stop and talk. “We are from near the Austrian border.” The man moves his cigar from right hand to left so we can shake. My hand is

THE PROSPECTIVE, OR WHAT I TELL THE MAN IN THE CAFE by Sudha Balagopal

February 12, 2020

My parents sent me to the movies with a man they found in the matrimonial columns of the Mumbai newspaper. They told me he was a romantic, a Bollywood aficionado. Perfect for someone like me who read Austen. They made concessions for this prospective from America, sending me out with a man for the first time, alone, at age twenty-one. My eyebrows stung—they’d been threaded and shaped into perfect crescents. The crimson on my nails and lips felt vulgar. I wanted to pull out the pins in my French braid, let my hair loose. *** You ask to meet with

MANLESSNESS by Meg Pokrass

February 11, 2020

The pizza delivery boy stumbles at the front door. He’s a bit shy. Me and Mom order pizza five nights a week. I serve her slices in bed, this is where she eats. When I open the door to him, I’m like a puddle of a girl, not a woman yet, not full of issues. What I offer: freckles, smiles, a minor eye twitch. “Blaze on, you two! You and your momma are PIZZA QUEENS!” he says. This kind of thing makes me unnaturally happy about the trials of living with a family who has stopped cooking food. The delivery

CINNAMON by Gina Marie Bernard

February 10, 2020

“Your mother should have had them tear you from her womb,” my stepmom says. “For the wicked shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” I flinch but know better than to reply. “What the hell, Darlene? You can’t say that shit,” my dad says from his recliner in the living room. As usual, it sounds more like a request. “I speak the Lord’s truth,” she replies, emphasizing each syllable with the wooden spoon she has pointed at him. “He will not abide your daughter acting like some filthy dyke.” My father looks from her to me. He shrugs and mouths,

HEADLESS HORSEMAN by Liz Fyne

February 9, 2020

Years ago I had a terrible dream that my cat was guillotined. Afterward she rolled her eyes this way and that, and it came to me that as a head you have no options. Questions spin through your mind on their way out forever and you want to cry and flail but all you can do is roll your eyes. In my case there was no guillotine. What happened was more of a spontaneous disconnect, because the junction was loose and my life was full of shaking. People say bronco busting can detach your kidneys, but no one warns about

IN THE TIME OF CLIMATE CHANGE (APOCALYPTIC VIEWFINDER #1) by Kathryn Kulpa

February 8, 2020

Flashing Obama I was feeding the cats and Barack Obama was there, at my back door, standing on the deck. He wore aviator sunglasses and a blue chambray shirt and jeans. I wanted to let him in but I had to keep one hand on my belt loop because I didn’t have a belt and my pants kept slipping and how awful would it be if my pants fell down in front of Obama? I had things I wanted to talk about with Obama. I wanted him to convince Joe Biden to drop out of the race. Joe Biden is

FAIR NIGHT NUMBER ONE by Tom Weller

February 2, 2020

Scrap Boys have each other. Scrap Boy 1, Scrap Boy 2, Scrap Boy 3, three prepubescent bodies lean and sharp as barbed wire, three backyard haircuts, three thunder-clap voices, three tornado spirits joined like the three chambers of a rattler’s heart. And tonight the Scrap Boys have the fair. Tonight they have snow cones and onion rings and rides that spin the Scrap Boys around and around and around and around until they can’t tell up from down. Tonight they have rock songs banging out of rickety speakers rattling their ribs. Tonight the Scrap Boys breathe humid night air full