Short

THE COIN by Rose Hollander

April 4, 2025

I spent my twenties working at a bike shop in a midwestern college town. The town was thick with rationality, overflowing from the university. Despite this, I believed in God. The strength of my belief shifted from day to day, but when I stood in church each Sunday my faith was strong again. My boyfriend, Don, agreed to come to church after two months of dating. “I can see it’s important to you,” he said. “So I’ll come. But don’t count on any sudden transformation when I hear the organ music.” And I knew that he was right, that his

SOLITUDE by Sebastian Castillo

April 2, 2025

The purchasing of books is life’s finest pleasure. And while I often have a stack of them unread, they are read eventually, and therefore this habit does not seem excessive or indulgent to me. It is perhaps a bourgeois affectation—there is something embarrassing of an over-large personal library—but there are certainly less healthy ways to spend one’s money. I am no stranger to that, certainly. If God and constancy may will it, that period of my life is closed shut, like a book I’d like to forget entirely. Those pages are wine-soaked anyhow, grainy with drug-powder, the words to those

AN EXCERPT FROM ‘AMERICAN LIT’ by Jennifer Greidus

March 10, 2025

While Ollie and I get stoned in his car every morning before school, I use my phone to take online career quizzes. I think in reverse, responding as I believe Mr. Stewart would. My mission is to find the amalgam of answers that triggers the “teacher” verdict. Only then will I know everything to say and do around him. My favorite quiz—and the most thorough—was created by an Ivy League school to assist its undergrads. I log into that one about once a day. Among others, my hypothetical responses produced these career options: CPA, correctional officer, lawyer, architect, and copy

HUNTING & GATHERING by Keely Curttright

February 26, 2025

Margot is a speck of red in her bright winter coat, scurrying up the cracked and litter-strewn sidewalk, her mousy brown hair a sad pinprick at the center of this speck and her breath a puff of vapor before her. This is, at least, how she envisions herself. She rarely leaves the apartment anymore, but when she does, she finds herself imagining her appearance, always as something unsuspecting and insignificant. She has tried to give up this habit but can’t help herself. A bug-eyed pigeon hops across the sidewalk and pecks at a discarded bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. As

BOLOGNA by Sean Hayes

January 24, 2025

We stood on top of our worlds as we knew them. The fall could kill us. Or worse. All part of the thrill. Henny, Walsh, and I were on the last level of scaffolding wrapped around the Bronson Windmill in Fairfield. We were heading into our senior year at Greenfield College Preparatory School. If you think we had on boat shoes judging from the last sentence, you’re wrong. Only Henny and I had on boat shoes. Walsh wore oversized flipflops with bottle openers on the soles. We sat down, dangling our feet over the edge of the scaffolding, swinging them

SKIES OF AMERICA by Mike Barthel

December 23, 2024

Lydia was in the Sam’s Club reaching for a box containing three boxes of cereal when the lanky man pushed his flatbed cart uncomfortably close to her flatbed cart. “As you can see, I have a compendium of canning jars,” he said. “Are you also interested in canning?” She squinted at his selection, six jars with glass handles that said “Wine-O-Clock” instead of “Ball.” Feeling charitable and a little intrigued, she said, “Did a whole shelf of asparagus this weekend. You need the tall jars for those.” The man nodded stiffly. “And do you enjoy dining at Cook Out? My

VISUAL SNOW by Drew Willis

December 19, 2024

I Dano wondered whether he might be too old to be a Dano. He got the name like he got self-consciousness. It had happened without a pinpointable moment of happening. When he came online, it was online with him. Now he was twenty-eight, a functional boozehound, in debt big time. He was a salesman at a local music shop and had been for ten years. He was regionally famous. If you said “Dano” in certain bars, at least one person would perk up and say, “Oh, Dano rocks,” or “Fuckin’ Danooooooo.” He was likely the most naturally gifted guitar player

GIFTS MY MOM GAVE ME by Tex Gresham

December 17, 2024

She was told to smile. She was always told to smile at the start of her shift. Cammie, give ‘em that smile. Not a suggestion, but mandatory. And she’d give it to ‘em. But tonight… The clients in here tonight crave holly jolly and so most say Smile, baby as they slip a tip in the thin hip strip of her thong. It’s the floor clients who say this mostly––the newcomers, the one-and-done-ers, the lonely men looking at her instead of looking at those waiting for them to get home this eve. The ones who walk in unnoticed. The ones

BEACH LAND by Lucas Flatt

December 9, 2024

Bushels of sargassum had washed up among the rental chairs. They clogged the beach. And so, fittingly, the day began with disappointment. Marjorie hated it, done up in strawberry print and pale as the moon with sunblock on her little face, thick like cream cheese. She scooped and hurled the stuff away from the chairs, scowling, haranguing the clods of seaweed. Gracie, implacable behind her sunglasses, rummaging through something on her phone, wouldn’t look Paul in the face. Paul toed the pile before his chair. “It’s got berries. We’ll make wine out of it.” Gracie frowned. “I have our tagline:

DEAR PHONE MAN by Karris Rae

November 22, 2024

Hello. I am Roy Whitaker. I have mailed you before, or maybe not you but someone else at your office, because my phone has been disconnected. I think this is because you think I am dead, but I am not dead, so I would like you to please reconnect my phone. I am waiting on a call from my daughter and if I have no phone I will never get it. And I would shimmy up that pole and see if I could reattach it myself only I am pretty old anymore and I do not have a little neighbor