Fiction

Alfredo Salvatore Arcilesi

It was clear to Cynth that the girl and boy didn’t want to kiss. Not with her sitting three benches away. Not with their pushy friend egging them on, cameraphone framed and ready.

The scene she was witnessing was written and directed by genetics. The girl was cute, petite, armed with perfected feminine mannerisms, all packaged in a fall outfit that teased of summer treats.  The boy was handsome, a model without a magazine cover, the world ready for his taking once enough testosterone filled his head with the notion.  […]

Lucie Culerrier

My viewers don’t know that I’m the one running the account. My username is bathroom684157 and most uploaders here are men. The question of my gender has never been brought up during my many interactions with my subscribers. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if they found out that the woman they watch undress every night is the same person that they message, asking for different angles or more cameras. They are always so friendly to me. Calling me “the man” or “bro.” I would miss those familiar interactions. The […]

Alysa Levi-D’Ancona

Jamila is watching from behind the bar as crimson treetops sway outside. Each swing of the door welcomes crisp October breeze.

It seems that work holds the years hostage, though it is more likely that working at a coffee shop called He-Brews It! in Manhattan is paltry to her. A crackling fireplace near the leather couch, bougie drink menus, and charcuterie boards: all were additions made by the new management to appeal to upper crust suckers. Jamila rolled her eyes at the improvements. Her new boss, Bacon, introduced the updates.

Jamila finds […]

Duncan Tierney

I was the only one, I think, who knew John Pat was not crucified. I think everyone knew it at one point. But that’s not what they know now, and that’s fine too.

I didn’t care much to talk about it. Still don’t. I just want it to be known that someone could.

I think a lot of things about the things people think about John Pat, but since I try not to try to know what I don’t know, I also try not to think about which things people […]

Pat Dutt

It’s John’s turn. To brace himself for the semi-annual visit, he runs up five flights of stairs with his luggage, the roar of the Atlantic Ocean in his ears, its turquoise-blue sheet of tranquility teasing him, and he pauses, gazing over the meticulously cut grass, the groomed red and orange blooming shrubs, the palm trees whose fronds stretch to the sky. At his mother’s condo, sitting inside her window are a dozen or faded bobbleheads, their springy necks heated by the Florida sun, mocking him with their oversized teeth, googly […]

Fiona Haborak

She saw a magpie on the way to the shore. Dead on the side of the road, its broken wings splayed at a garish, crooked angle. She imagined the crack of bone like the snap of lightning as it plummeted down to the ground.

Her eyes wandered to the tree.

Had it fallen from a nest called grace?

So, she took it home with her: this rotten, decayed thing. It was sticky, messy, feathers loose and fluttering away. She liked how the blood crusted under […]

Emily Fontenot

Aspidistra Elatior. Adiantum Raddianum. Calathea Makoyana. Alcasia polly. Ficus pumila. Argyroderma testiculare. Ceropegia linearis. Parodia magnifica. Ferocactus glaucescens. Mammillaria spinosissima.

Temperature-controlled rooms. A regimen of watering, individualized. Pythagorean theorem of sunlight, each pot angled perfectly.

Until the Mammillaria spinosissima, I had never measured plants. I trusted they would grow in their own time, and they always did. Everyday an inspection, sure, which some people say minimizes the appearance of growth. I disagree. The magic is in the small changes. I know each and every one of these plants. I know each leaf […]

Sarah Archer

The town of Godshock possessed its own sort of madness. Cats walked telephone wires like tightropes, and books fell open to page thirteen. One October day, as the leaves crackled off the trees, Lilsa walked home from school. The sky, pierced with spires and television aerials and crowded with chimneys scrawling runes of smoke onto the air, cleared as she went from town to field to the dense pine forest.

She stopped as she entered the woods. On the path was a wagon tacked to a bony white horse, so still […]

clari (mars) gao

Ba calls again to remind me that we are from Shandong Rizhao, north of the mountain where the sun shines, from my father’s father’s father’s father’s side; although, Ba has never even been there, and I just wonder where all my mothers went. He tells me that it’s been too long and that history, like a green onion, does not last forever. 第一, the root lasts four to five generations at best, and 第二, it mutates, meaning it will not taste the same regrown in different waters.

When he left […]