Flash

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

MAGNOLIA by Sarah Starr Murphy

November 1, 2021

The bumblebee swerves across the yard to a yellow daffodil. The bee clings to the flower’s face for an instant, then crawls on her abdomen into the cylinder of the corona, stretching her tongue towards the sweet nectar and flattening her last two legs behind like a puppy. She nuzzles in, wriggling. She backs out, clinging onto the rim with her four hind legs. Her front two legs wipe the pollen from her furry body. It falls in tiny but discernible chunks. She wipes her head a few more times, then buzzes off for the next flower. The young boy

MALL MADNESS

October 31, 2021

Between 7th and 8th period, Becky tells us she can speak to the dead. She swears she can show us after school. When she pulls the box from beneath her bed, we expect a ouija board. Instead, she produces Mall Madness, fun for ages eight to eighty. As she unfolds the board, it greets us. “Attention shoppers: There’s a clearance at the sunglasses boutique.” The four of us gather cross-legged around the game, and Becky explains the rules. “Wait to ask your questions until it says your car lights are on and you must go to the parking lot, That’s

TRAUMA SCOUTS OF AMERICA by Joe Kapitan

October 29, 2021

For the sisters of brothers Merit Badge: Hatchet Skills Beth’s two fingertips laid there on the plywood floor of our fort in the woods. Her left middle and left index looked like two rubber fakes with the nails painted a loud orange, two made-in-Taiwan Halloween gags from Spencer’s Gifts in the mall, except that the pool of blood between her shaking, mangled left hand and the detached fingertips was growing fast, each beat of her pounding heart made visible by a fresh outflow from the stumps. The guilty hatchet was dropped next to the pool of blood, its blade

THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT by David Luntz

October 20, 2021

The weight of light can be measured by my Uncle Kev’s death. But before that, some memories: it’s family dinner and Uncle Kev’s explaining how the bread mashed in his ex-boxer’s sixty-year-old fist represents Pangea and the glass of red wine in his fingers the Tethys Sea. He’s telling us about the earth’s history, Wegener’s theory of continental drift, orogeny, extinct volcanoes, dragonflies in amber, and trilobites. Mom and dad tune him out. So do I. I get enough of that kind of shit at school. But Uncle Kev doesn’t care. He’s relentless, a natural fighter, and won’t stop until

ON BUILDING A NEST by Stella Lei

October 16, 2021

My mother’s house always looked halfway to collapse. She had paid copious amounts of money to build it this way—its perpetually slouching walls, its staircases that jerked into corners before snarling to the next floor. This was because she preferred things that existed between one state and another. Her philosophy was as follows: you cannot determine something’s worth before it is finished, and most everything finished is bad—corrupted by greed, or rust, or the general incompetence of its maker. And so the house lurched across a river like a lopsided Fallingwater, its unending rush lulling her to the edge of

FULL OF HOLES by Luz Rosales

October 15, 2021

Kylie fingers Martina under the bleachers after school. Martina is warm, and moist, and slippery, and when she cums against Kylie’s palm, she moans so loudly that Kylie thinks everyone on campus must have heard. She hopes this is true. “I’m so proud of myself,” she says, and Martina laughs her scratchy laugh. Martina doesn’t come to school the next day, doesn’t answer Kylie’s texts. The day after that, she’s found floating down a river in pieces. *** Several of their classmates attend her funeral. They crowd together in the church, sniffling, and holding each other, and pretending to cry.

SPEECH CAPABLE by Elias Chen

October 14, 2021

Changliu and her sister were huddled over the kitchen counter. Between them lay an unopened bowl of instant ramen, shrink wrap intact, the container propped upright on a folded kitchen towel. Changliu and her sister looked directly into the smiling face of the man printed on the lid. The image was animate, blinking, shifting his shoulders, his lips parting now and again like he was about to speak but waiting for a cue. It was their idol, Xiao Tan. What was supposed to happen? After they opened the package, Xiao Tan was supposed to launch into a ninety-second monologue from

Monologue of a pirate ship that doesn’t have a figurehead, or maybe it did, long ago, but it’s hard to tell now because its bow is encrusted with these ossified clam shells and barnacles, which, during a storm, scuttle about and open up and scream, as though they had mouths. by Jiaqi Kang

October 13, 2021

I only ever wanted to know how it felt to have the wind beneath your feet, eager to hoist you up to where you needed to be, hands outstretched, palms faced upwards and fingers laced together, inviting. As a sapling I watched children do that, paid special attention to the one at the bottom who was always getting a faceful of leg, ass, and hand as his friends used him to clamber over the wall. I was friends with the wall. My roots were entwined with the bricks at its foundation. We’d come up around the same time, the wall

MISSIONS by Ali Raz

October 12, 2021

Mission 1 We weren’t in any particularly good place, just a parking lot without any cars. Part of the lot had been flooded and now resembled a pond. It was only a matter of time until A, high on soda, stripped out of his clothes and plunged in. The others encouraged him with maniacal hoots of laughter. I ducked over to untie my shoelaces, squeezed a tube of explosives from inside of one, and proceeded to attach it to the underside of A’s Toyota. I waited for two hours to be out of sight before I dialed The Number