The Best Day of Her Life

(CW: forced marriage) Sumitra Singam Nadaswaram blaring in her ear. Mridangam beat pounding in her chest. Sanskrit verses cracking like thunder. Petals […]

Hunger

Bayveen O’Connell After the harvest moon, the Famine Grave yawns open and scores of corpses clamber onto the red carpet of Japanese […]

Little Bird

DW McKinney The mother calls her daughter Little Bird for the golden tufts atop her head and the way she mimics the […]

The Closet

Georgia Bellas We rattle the door without a doorknob. We press against its wood, damp and swollen in the frame, but it […]

Wolf Spiders Hunt in Packs

Cole Beauchamp               Not all spiders catch their prey in webs. We learned this on the longest day of the year.               […]

Mint Sauce

Frances Gapper               We invite Auntie to tea. Hiding our lips behind flowery teacups, we peep at her. She is lamb chops, […]

Whelk

Frances Gapper Now it’s not safe to go out, they order bottles of guaranteed healthy air and crave injections of fresh young […]

Torque

Marie Little Jennifer carefully tightens the last tiny wingnut, a turn for a word: serendipity, coruscate, hullabaloo.  The press is beginning to […]

Special Victims

Colleen Kearney Rich Pam doesn’t plan to lie. It just slips out. Imagined life made real. The girl at work, her face […]

Expressions of Joy

Nathan Xie               He exclaims things like nodders, or yagoo, or hrmhrm, and the first time folks ask him what he means, […]

After She’d Gone

Cath Barton               He was here the next morning, my brother. Sitting at my kitchen table, spooning marmalade onto his toast.               […]

Music Lesson

Anthony D’Aries Don’t tell your four-year-old son how Marvin Gaye died. Unless you want to answer questions about fathers and guns and […]

The Deaths

Ann Gelder               At first there were three deaths: two big deaths and a small death. These deaths were well-mannered. They always […]

Ferris Wheel

Ashley Espinoza My dad shows me an entire photo album of my mom pregnant with me. It’s weird, my dad has never […]

Grandmother’s Kitchen

Madeleine Pelletier Grandmother’s kitchen is a gathering place. Women turn their masks inside out, cluster round cooking pots, and offer prayers to […]

Anderson Shelter

Edward Barnfield In the morning, there’s a hole where the house used to be. The kitchen, where we drank tea and talked […]

Countess Herzinga’s Alchemy

Janna Miller               Countess Herzinga was the first to study the transmutable properties of eggshells as applied to light and sound. Her […]

Homecoming

Anne Daly A turlough blooms each winter at the bottom of our road. It used to be my road, when I was […]

Cold Comfort

Laura Pike               I lie in bed, shivering in cold sheets, waiting for the nightly crumb of her affections in an otherwise […]

False Flat

Caroline Gonda It’s a thing in cycling, apparently, an incline you don’t recognise as one because it’s not that steep so you […]

The Side Show of Birth

Amy Barnes               I give birth to the longest baby ever on the longest day of the year. 144 inches. A gross […]

Clothesline Number 9

Amy Barnes               The sun dries my paintings where Mama can’t see me. I’m supposed to be doing chores but instead I’m […]

Babydoll

Sarah Jones               A moment of silence, please, for my missing left breast. For the spreading lumps bubbling through me. Ripping me […]

Two Needles, One Dog

Kev Thomas I asked to see the vet. I was holding Gaia in my arms. She was wrapped in my school coat, […]

Post Modern

A. Joseph Black Christ, he’s still there. I lean back out of view and catch the curtain with my shoulder. It sways […]

Scarlett’s Got a Gun

Fiona McKay Scarlett’s got a gun. Moves on alcohol-soft legs through a glass room, louring shadows, candlestick-high. Feels no pain, plant-pot rammed, […]

They Were Boiling Their Clothes

Rodrigo Duran               They were boiling their clothes.               They were in the kitchen wearing raincoats, but the true outfits swirled in […]

Night Fishers

Merridawn Duckler Water against the pier like a throat click. The churned blanket of our childhood bed. Lines curve back and fly […]

Seed, Root, Shoot

James Montgomery Soon enough, there’ll be time for twelve red roses. A carnation wrist corsage. Homemade Christmas wreaths hung from her own […]

Museum Piece

Becky May They’d hung Monet’s ‘Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond’ across the white expanse of wall in the end room, […]

macro photo of black fly

The Weeping Woman

Claire Hampton               I watch the man at the table gnawing his dirty fingernails, pungent sweat darkening the underarms of his denim […]

The Devil You Know (TW: Abuse)

Ariel M. Goldenthal Editorial note from Sara Siddiqui: In very few words, Ariel shows us the day-to-day, minute-to-minute struggle of an almost-twelve-year-old […]

It Pulls You Under

Laila Amado The season of the fogs brings heat and languor to this island lost in the middle of the sea. Everything […]

Panache

T.L. Sherwood The thinness of the envelope puzzles me. Harris has sent a slender, white, unusual feather. Days later, an email explains […]

Dream Baby

Max Hipp Shake your heart like a half-pint of milk, blow in it, put it back in. It’s another night of playing […]

The Soft Th

Rosaleen Lynch My English teacher counted my ‘you knows’ during a debate and the soft ‘th’ that made ‘dis’ out of ‘this’ […]

Double universe

Francine Witte There are forests, there are planets, there is the moon. In this universe, you are nothing but a speckity spec. […]

Cornered

Liz Churchill He’s racing to catch up with his mum when he spots leopard skin between the wheelie-bins. It’s well past his […]

Driven Home

Rob McIvor Alice stops the car in a quiet spot, a service road behind the Multiplex. The last film ended an hour […]

The Other Side of Me

Helen Chambers               A confident stranger with newly-cropped hair stares back at me in the mirror. Does she feel lucky, I wonder? […]