Short | X-R-A-Y

LONELINESS AND HEARTACHE IN THE DISCARDED APPLE CORE PIT OF AMERICA’S ROTTED DREAM FOR AND OF ITSELF by Nathaniel Duggan

May 21, 2021

Lately Frank has been feeling especially Frank-like, his days reduced to the potato chip crumbs he has failed to brush from his lap—as if he, the essence of himself, is a shirt that can be slipped on or off and has been worn perhaps a few too many weeks in a row. He wets the bed more than when he was a child, although back then his piss was hot and searing as shame, whereas now it is simply cold as a metal unexpectedly touched. His sweat, too, is cold. His dreams are muggy as incest, bratty stepsiblings fucked. He

THE KRASNERS by Aaron Kreuter

May 14, 2021

When I think back to those days it is fear that I remember, fear that I keep returning to, fear that I cannot get away from. First there’s the free-floating, general fear of adolescence: the fear of fitting in, the fear of saying the right thing, the fear of a body under revolt. And, for the most part, it wasn’t on the school playground or the mall food court, but at Kol B’Seder, the Reform synagogue my parents joined when I was twelve, where the major battles against these fears were waged. I fell in love in those hallways, made

THE ROAD 2 NOWHERE by KKUURRTT

May 7, 2021

My friend Brian joined a cult. He was always doing stupid shit like that. This one time when we were fifteen he jumped off a bridge cause fucking Mike Langer dared him to. He broke his shinbone when he hit the water and spent the rest of summer in a cast. It wasn’t all bad though. Langer sold weed and gave him a half-ounce for free because he felt terrible about daring him to do it even though we were playing Truth or Dare on a bridge which was dumb on everybody’s part. Honestly, we’re lucky it came up as

HAZARD by Nicholas Rall

April 23, 2021

Ethel and Edith tried to keep their eyes open, resting in a square of brownish dying grass; an empty lot. There used to be a family who lived there, and I could see the kids play in the driveway from our window, until men with big, yellow machines tore it down and it stayed like that until the girls took me with them. They’d been in the neighborhood for a few hours, walking through about half the state of Florida, staying close to the interstate. Usually they could get a ride but not that night, and it was time to

ARE YOU MY MOTHER? by Allie Zenwirth

January 20, 2021

A I used to get these pangs of want, filled with unnamable desires. You would find me jumping. You would find me erratic. I want to make something. I want to dance with somebody… I want to feel the heat with somebody… yeah… With somebody who loves me. Я хочу. I want… I want… I want… I don’t know… I want… If you were that stranger at the bar you would ask me, “How do you have so much energy?” and I would say, “I don’t know,” and then jeté away. Now I’m drained, all my juice is gone. Instead

THE SIDE DOOR by Michael Farfel

January 8, 2021

Wendy wore black. He loved that most about her. She made her way over, careful, slow steps, like a deer, like he was extending bits of food. “Your arms are smaller than mine. I just need to loosen that nut. But I can’t reach it,” Carl said over the exposed engine. “Smaller,” she repeated and made a show of flexing her arms. He laughed, “You’re just more compact, is all. Come on, sweetheart. Give it a throw?” She pulled her hair into a ponytail. Maybe it was her hair he loved most. She bent over the engine and maneuvered the

SOMETHING SERIOUS by Austin Putty

December 28, 2020

For whatever reason, I didn’t want to lie to myself and say it wasn’t cheating. No matter how undecided I was about Glenn, whether I was using the evening as a test to see if I really loved him or not, the fact of the matter was that I had agreed to the blind date and had therefore opened myself to the possibility of cheating. Of that in itself, I was undoubtedly guilty, but guilt, oddly, wasn’t the emotion that came over me—it was irritation. That feeling was blown away, though, the moment I shook my date’s frosty, glistening hand.

MY MOM TOLD ME TO EAT TINY SANDWICHES by Dough Mahoney

November 25, 2020

my mom took a picture of me walking to the car. she took a picture of me in the car. we drove towards eatonton, georgia. i wanted to vape but couldn’t. or i could, but it would ruin the trip. i didn’t vape. i read a few pages from black jacobins. i asked how long the drive was going to take. five hours, my dad said. i thought he was joking. i asked if he was joking. he said he wasn’t joking. five hours isn’t too long, i said. i drank coffee from a thermos. i finished the coffee. i

MALE ENDURANCES by Nora MacLeod

October 14, 2020

My college friend asked me out for drinks and named a bar equidistant to our offices and apartments. The last time I went there a dentist had hit on me with his Argentinian friend who claimed he worked for the CIA. The time before that I’d fainted on the sidewalk during a first date, it was the best date of my life. Arriving at the bar, I felt as though I was returning to the dumping ground of a dead body, coming back to touch his hair and maybe sit on his rotting face. In a dream I felt I

LETTERS TO MACKENZIE by Blake L. Bell

September 17, 2020

I We were wild girls. Raised with dirty feet, tangled hair. Our dogs followed us down the roads we walked, but our mommas rarely did. We played hard, fought hard, loved hard. Fate cheated us from being sisters, so we bound ourselves together with blood ritual. We couldn’t go downstairs to the kitchen to get a knife, afraid of waking momma. Instead, we broke a jar in the upstairs bathroom and sliced our thumbs open; our skin peeled back, vessels bursting and spilling over. We pressed our cuts together and imagined our blood forever combined. “Soul sisters,” we said, sucking