Flash

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

BABES by Ian Anderson

January 31, 2020

She wants to know how it works. It’s easy, he tells her. You create a profile on the Babes app, upload a couple pictures of your baby, fill out the profile, and then people can start Holding. Thirty dollars for the first hour; five dollars for each additional fifteen minutes. They’re pushing their toddlers in the swings next to each other. She only knows him from the playground, but he’s always seemed like a good dad. Engaged. Attentive. The worst thing she can say about him is that he has a mustache. It surprises her to learn that he rents

THE FLYING NUN, THE FROZEN DEAD: 1966-1968 by Gregg Williard

January 28, 2020

Recently deceased science fiction writer Harlan Ellison wrote a 1968 episode of the TV series, “The Flying Nun” in order, he said, “to fuck Sally Fields.” If he just had a chance to get close to her, he believed, he could persuade her to have sex with him. The episode was titled, “You Can’t Get There from Here.” Sister Bertrille (Field) crashes on a remote island after the wind dies down. Her glider-like head piece, or cornette, falls in the water and is torn, leaving her stranded. She discovers other castaways, a pair of feuding lovers, who eventually reunite and

GOD AT 60 by Bill Merklee

January 27, 2020

We started as marginal Catholics, going though the motions. Now I was having dinner with Kenny, the only one of us who’d stuck with it. Father Postlewaite to his parish. It’d been too long. “Andre still an atheist?” he said. “Yup. In Oregon. Found himself a nice godless girl.” “And Coyne?” “Still waiting for Armageddon.” Kenny grinned without looking at me, eased back in his chair. “Remember that comparative religion class? All those speakers trying to explain their faith before the bell rang?” “The Baptist preacher in the powder blue suit? Right out of central casting.” “They’d never get away

IMAGINE WHAT MY BODY WOULD SOUND LIKE by Hannah Grieco

January 26, 2020

Twenty-year-old me had biceps. Back from a year away, rock climbing and waiting tables, fucking women for the first time. I walked differently. Strutting in my baggy cargo pants, flirting with those baby butch Oberlin girls. A new me. In the college library lounge, short-haired, smooth-skinned girlfriends ran their fingertips up my sculpted arms and I ignited. *** This morning I wake to my daughter’s nightmare whimpers. Tucked under my armpit, bone-thin, her ribs pressing into my side. Always burning up, she wears only underwear in the house. No blankets except her lovey, clutched to her cheek in sleep. 4

ABOUT DINNER by Veronica Klash

January 24, 2020

You know what it means to have dinner. The meal that satiates before slumber. After the sky is drained of fire and flooded with ink. But what does it mean to have dinner with a man? To sit across from each other at that Thai place that just opened. To look at the menu and not see the words because his hand grazed yours and euphoria dripped from the base of your neck down your spine and he smells like mint and spice and something else that you can’t describe and you rush your inhale so you can breathe him

ENERGY FROM LIVING THINGS by Laura Eppinger

January 17, 2020

I examine the head of lettuce because he tells me to, but I don’t know what he wants me to see. Broad romaine leaves the color of spring rest outside his canvas shopping bag, sure. Just a few minutes ago, John shouted at me for putting my slicker on the wrong hanger in his coat closet, or through the wrong loop inside the jacket. It’s hard to keep track, since I needed to kick my muddy boots off before stepping through the front door. I thought I was following all the rules, but I missed another one, and this time

THE YEAR I WAS MOST HUNGRY by Shane Cashman

January 16, 2020

When I wear my long, dark peacoat, I look like I’m about to betray my country; I instigate assassinations; I have affairs in 1964; I fly first class. When ex-presidents die, the whole nation wears peacoats and flags at half-mast. We all of a sudden show a strange love for someone we used to curse––it’s that kind of love people only show once someone’s gone. We only truly love you once we’ve thrown you in your casket––we’re a culture of goddamned necrophiliacs. The length of my coat reminds me I’m just over six feet tall; my height equals the common

STUMBLING ON CONCRETE by Mileva Anastasiadou

January 15, 2020

I was overweight when I started the diet, but eating less didn’t help much. I lost some weight, yet I still feel heavy. I told him last night. My husband eyed me up and down, checking for excess fat, then said I look fine, but I don’t feel fine at all. I should move to Mars, perhaps, where gravitational forces feel less powerful, I said jokingly, or turn into a bird, I thought, only I didn’t say that aloud. He suggested exercise and I shrugged. I’m not certain exercise will help take the burden off of me, but I could

CHAMP by Emma Hodson

January 14, 2020

The man smells like smoke. He is moving into a new apartment on a street that used to be a bustling thoroughfare, but now is just another grey road. That is, the apartment is new to him, but not to this world. It’s close to his old spot, just a few blocks, but it’s noticeably more decayed. A beige building shoved in between a Thai place and pay-per-hour motel, a single tarnished mini van parked in the driveway most days. The apartment was built in 1973 when mom-and-pop shops dotted the street, bubbly hand-painted signs, and women doing their grocery