Cotton candy from the sky

Swetha AmitFebruary 6, 2023

When I was little, I'd point at the sky and ask Mama if I could have that cotton candy fluff. Sometimes white, sometimes pink, and occasionally orange, they'd c...

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Drunk People Aren’t Deaf and Temperates are Blind

Ann McCordFebruary 5, 2023

On late night after a track meet, and coincidentally a Royals game, my friends and I went on a run to IHOP—the only restaurant still open at 11:30 PM. As we sta...

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Space Oddity

Coty PoynterFebruary 2, 2023

The bugs in Castor’s head writhed beneath his skull. He threw his burner at the rock-covered ground and screamed, his strained voice reverberating across the la...

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It’s Not a Disney Movie

Chelsea DoddsFebruary 1, 2023

“When I got back to my car I was like, wait… if I didn’t have a boyfriend, were we about to kiss?” Carissa hadn’t planned on telling any of her friends back ...

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4 Bds, 2.5 Ba Craftsman, 2350 Sq Ft

Anthony Neil SmithJanuary 30, 2023

Thank you for sending along the house inspection report. I’m sorry it’s taken so long for me to respond. My ex-wife and I had to discuss it, which took more ene...

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Beer for Breakfast

Phoenix DeSimoneJanuary 25, 2023

One hungover morning wasn’t that different from any other hungover morning. At least that’s what Leslie like to tell herself. She struggled out of bed as her al...

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The Triumph of Fear

Steve GergleyJanuary 20, 2023

For nearly every night of the past year, Simon Page has stumbled, half-blind and terrified, through the morphing liquid maze of horrors that are his chronic nig...

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Things Marlene Knew

Kacey LeeJanuary 16, 2023

Marlene didn’t know a lot of things, but she knew enough. She knew an average number of things to an average degree of knowledgeability. If you fall asleep befo...

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Newark Academy’s Homelessness Night

A.A. WeissJanuary 15, 2023

Something was wrong with Mr. Fleeter.  He was usually so approachable, happy to talk with anyone. Unlike other teachers who struggled to connect with student...

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Mostly Ziplocs

Robert Nazar ArjoyanJanuary 13, 2023

“Don’t move, OK?” “OK.” Agh. Couldn’t she just put it on the stupid countertop? Spices do smell good, though. I need to shower, clean Harley’s ear, ...

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Remedy for a Closed Mind

Liz LanierJanuary 10, 2023

Your third-highest-grossing film got shit reviews. You shouldn’t be surprised, really: It’s just another day of doing exactly what it was you said you wanted...

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Don’t Be Evil.

Matt RowanJanuary 7, 2023

Your grandmother had written it down on a blue note card she must have kept in her old mahogany secretary desk. You remember the desk because of the way its wri...

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Graverobbers

Rob BenvieJanuary 4, 2023

No, she said, it has to be deeper. If I go much deeper, he said, we’ll hit a water main or something. So you hit one, she said, and then we course-correct. But ...

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K-Y Duration Spray for Men

Thomas HobohmJanuary 3, 2023

You say that you love New York, and fine, I won’t disabuse you of that notion, all I’ll say is that while you were flying business class into JFK and staying in...

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Memoirs of a Dissociative Youth

Dan MoreyJanuary 2, 2023

Every week in group therapy we are encouraged to share what is generally referred to as life experience. The idea is to diffuse individual psychoneurotic suffer...

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Wikipedia

Claire FennellJanuary 1, 2023

The Wikipedia page for Hopscotch will tell you that the game was invented in prehistoric India, dating some time between 600 and 500 BCE. Time counted down, bac...

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The way you wear the corpses in your hair

Caleb BetheaDecember 30, 2022

Hammocked in your curls. Little dead humans, embalmed with nothing but shampoo, linseed oil conditioner. Even their teeth are cleaned with scalp-curing properti...

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The Museum of Lost Objects

James R. GapinskiDecember 29, 2022

Your lost keys glisten on a plinth near the entrance. You remember the 1992 Dodge Neon that these belonged to, and how the entire car felt hollow and plastic an...

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Where We Buy Our Happiness

Leslie WilberDecember 29, 2022

When Meg first walks into a thrift store, a question automatically pricks the back of her mind. How is she gonna drink out of something that comes from a place ...

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Stanley Kubrick Directs Me Through My Cancer Diagnosis

SR SchulzDecember 28, 2022

“I’ve got bad news,” I say. “It’s not good.”   “Cut!” Stanley shouts.    The lights change. People exhale. Murmurs fill the silence.  &...

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On the Day the Alchemist Discovers Alkahest

Avra MargaritiDecember 26, 2022

Her face will be all over the news: concealer hastily dabbed around black-hole eyes, caffeine patch glue curling leg- and arm-hairs like pill bugs, fingerprints...

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The Summer of Our Bewitchment

Mark BenedictDecember 23, 2022

May I felt a queasy foreboding when the blackout hit. Cell and internet service were down too. My wife Mary, a librarian, a devout optimist, took it in strid...

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Your Police Subscription Has Expired

Thomas Kent WestDecember 20, 2022

I paid the cops once they were done with the hobo on the trampoline. I said, while I was paying them, can you believe this? In this neighborhood? A hobo? And th...

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THE NAME OF THE ALBUM

R. Tim MorrisDecember 19, 2022

Fred had routines. They were always there—routines and habits, all in a particular order, and a part of everything Fred knew. His routines could be listed easil...

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The Most Magical Place on Earth

Nick GregorioDecember 8, 2022

She wakes up at three. She wakes her daughter up shortly thereafter. She showers. She makes her daughter a light breakfast. She drives them both to ...

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Check Your Risk Level

Tara Stillions WhiteheadDecember 6, 2022

Shoshona got her period the day after the Fallbrook Fire erupted east of Highway 15 and incinerated hundreds of acres of pot and palm tree farms. Her boyfriend ...

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L.A. is the end of time (three meditations on temporality)

NIck HilbournDecember 2, 2022

I. Midnight Premonition I wake up in a dark room to the sound of a blade cutting the wash of traffic outside.  My body completely wet.  It feels like I’m going...

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Astronauts

Mersiha BruncevicDecember 1, 2022

A young man, Hippolytus, and a young woman, Pip, sit on a ring around Saturn. Stars shoot all around, no sounds but for Hippolytus and Pip talking.   H...

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Begotten

Jack MoodyNovember 30, 2022

Growing out of adolescence was like emerging from a dense fog. You breathe better, the things around you become easier to identify. You retain the shape of t...

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Diary of an Extra

Alex SimandNovember 29, 2022

In my movie, I am a girl walking alone on a subway platform. The dark corners imply gruff hands, sandpaper fingers threatening to wring me out and dump me on th...

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