by Michelle Geoga Penelope was already thinking having some babies would make her feel better then she found one at the Kmart, a sleepy one with long dark lashes, tiny fist balls clen…

by Nina Sudhakar Into a shallow river, the holy tributary, we poured all of our ashes. Hard of bone and soft of soul: the remnants of our ancestors. The sandbar baked in the sun until…

by Michael Díaz Feito A frondy dog dictated to the things how to take my portrait (and Cnut, drooling sugar, videoed it): “Clip wool turf, mower. Peel then white mold, knife. Gravel t…

by Phoebe Reeves-Murray He became aware of colors swirling across the sky in front of him: purple, pink, green, yellow. He tried to touch them, but the curve of the sky bowed away lik…

by Kyle Hemmings Shortly before my girlfriend died, she asked me to take care of her pet dinosaur. It was the kind that flew–a Confuciusornis. For most of the time that we had …

by Brooke Reynolds Mary’s mother tells Mary to cut down her flowering tree, for it is barren and refuses to bear fruit. Mary tells her mother it is a flowering tree, with other purpos…

by Sylvia Schwartz A small girl is riding her bike back and forth, trapped in a long, rectangular enclosed box. She does not see that she is confined; her eyes are cast down at her fe…

by GJ Hart Done with remorseful tick and defiant tock and applauding foreheads and wonted theorems behind tremoring hands on grey-areas and Neptune’s one true pyramid, Denholme …

by Erin Jamieson Though our family lives in Ulaanbaatar, we knew we couldn’t bury Aab there. Not under the smoky hue that clogged the city skyline. Not beyond the ashy streets, the sa…

by Gay Degani Jennifer, “Jen,” as she preferred to be called, used to meet her neighbor, Howard, in Rocketship Park. They made a game of it. She would be in her jogging clothes, her f…

by J. Bradley I don’t know why my boys have never asked me where my old body went when I became what I am now. It’s like they expected this to happen, all my wrongs and sins poisoning…

by Omer Friedlander My parents had bought the first model of the Changing Home at a reduced price, when it was only an experiment. Our experience was used as a case study, to test it …

by Matthew Moffett If Sophie Brown were an artist, she’d sculpt her own body in clay, in various poses, life-sized and writhing in torment. Then, she’d exhibit the figures…

by Lisa Favicchia It had to be hot, because otherwise the snake head would not have been crispy like bacon on the outside, would not have retained its sheen long enough to be conceiva…

by Timothy Day Claire was in the process of cleaning out her closet when she found the box, stuffed into the corner and conspicuously unlabeled, traces of soot lining its edges. She o…

by Merridawn Duckler I wake at my namesake. Today is the day. Gold air, baby blue clouds. Sun on the rim like a blood line across the knuckle. I feel the board falling into the empty …

by Howie Good The Drowned and the Saved Everyone wants to see the trapeze guy fall and the lion trainer killed. Then we can forget our own problems. What have we come to? Oh, a moving…

by Erick Sáenz “Jim!” Echo through empty space. “Don’t worry about me, I’m okay.” That familiar smile. And then a flash. Sense of awareness. Sunlight peeking through blinds. Jim…

by Santino Prinzi These Are the Rules of Our Canopy Shyness and Life When my parents were saplings, my grandparents taught them the rules of canopy shyness: Do not let your lea…

by Anna Vangala Jones Her shoes aren’t ones she chose to walk in, but they’re the shoes she’s been given. They’re brown and scuffed and the laces have that frayed, gray, been in too m…

by Mary Lynn Reed He stands on the porch, smoking his last cigarette again. His hands are too smooth and his shoulders slouch. He tries to keep the smoke blowing in the right directio…

by suiyi tang when i was finally permitted to see my mother, moments after her surgery, she turned me away and asked for my father. his presence centered her in a way that mine did no…

by Sandra Arnold From the outside, apart from the moth-eaten taxidermy and ferret skulls in the window, The Waiting Room in Whistler’s Lane looks like your average junk shop. The insi…

by Miriam Balanescu Their anniversary at Primrose Hill – 8:32pm. A pin-prick star to sit beside its moon, that (moon) plate punctured into coppering blue. (The moon is a gape, or an a…

by Andrew Reichard The electric glider pulsed down green and yellow farming fields and silvopasture, Franz clinging to the catchstrap with one hand and the camera with the other. He’d…

by Stephanie Valente Dad’s girlfriend lets us stay up late. Dad’s girlfriend takes us to the mall and drops us off two blocks early. She never waits. Dad’s girlfriend bought us dark b…

by Ken Cormier Music school hallway, practice rooms all around: ahead, behind, above, below. Head full of headphones, hands full of microphone and audio recorder, sneakers too dead to…

by Christopher Gonzalez My mom stabs coin-sized pockets into a pork shoulder. This allows vinegar to swish through the muscle fibers—like white wine in a sommelier’s mouth: in, …

by Phoebe Reeves-Murray Matter and energy cannot be destroyed. That’s the First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy can be changed, moved, controlled, stored, or dissipated, but not created…

by Chelsea Ruxer The tower is full of bodies still sleeping. A staircase winds through its center, a steep corkscrew of a spine. It felt like dreaming when I crept down it. I started …