Enter: The Clown.
Read More
Still Life With Chair by Jericho Parms
The canvas hung askew. Thickly coated in acrylic, the painting bore the abstract depiction of a chair, singular and empty, in a room of three distorted walls. I didn’t recognize the painting, nor did I particularly care for it, but I appreciated the expressionist approach.
Read More
Sleepless by Ann Hood
“But here was evidence that maybe, if this ever did happen, I wouldn’t be able to scream or run out the door. That something—fear, disbelief, paralysis—might keep me right there, in place.”
Read More
Of Pumps and Death by Marcia Aldrich
I hardly dared open my mouth, even to say something innocuous like “Sure, I’m hungry. I could eat dinner.” My words might be analyzed to reveal something knotty, something sinister I didn’t know I felt but really ought to know I felt.
Read More
The Sick Diet by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
because you left a good-bye note written on paper made of mummies.
Read More
The Elephant by Riley Kross
My wife kept to her alcove. I kept to my nook. The elephant played between us.
Read More
Joy and Pain, Sunshine and Rain: On Teaching/Reading Ross Gay’s Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Even when his poems take a darker turn, such as recalling the murder of a friend and colleague, or the bittersweet memory of a childhood crush who has since passed away—there are moments of true grace within these elegies—a slowing down, not in pacing but in memory’s leaps.
Read More
Selenium Sulfide by SJ Sindu
I’m here tonight because a week ago I woke up and discovered that my inner thighs had started turning white. Not chalk-white. White-girl white.
Read More
The End of Coney Island Avenue by Roohi Choudhry
In this country, a man could be lost and no one would know enough to grieve, not even his own mother.
Read More
Float by Marcia Aldrich
I hardly dared open my mouth, even to say something innocuous like “Sure, I’m hungry. I could eat dinner.” My words might be analyzed to reveal something knotty, something sinister I didn’t know I felt but really ought to know I felt.
Read More
This is a Parable by Isabel Quintero
“Your mother is afraid of lizards. This is a constant. In the present or the past, she is always afraid of lizards. When you were a child, one crept in the house when your father was out, probably getting high––though you cannot blame everything on addiction. He might have been working.”
Read More
Tractor Town by SJ Sindu
My cousin is late. And handsome. And very late. And, technically, not my cousin. But sex would be complicated, and he’s probably a virgin, and his English is not so good, so I let it go.
Read More
Hema and Kathy by Anita Felicelli
“Hema immediately wanted to please him. Theo was black-haired, handsome in a vulpine way, stocky and muscular, yet agile, and a little older than Kai. He was French, and played professionally in London for ten years before coming to the United States. He’d played for France’s soccer team in 1998 when they won the World Cup. He wanted the girls he coached—girls like Hema—to be tough and fierce, to be consummate sportswomen.”
Read More
My Country 'Tis: Listening to Ishmael Read by Ru Freeman
this King & Kennedy country
that fast draws
that kills slow
My Country 'Tis: Learning Their Letters by Ru Freeman
the justifiable fears
of waking from an American fantasy of arrival
in places that require defense, let him go.
A Woman Without Origin by Elaine Hsieh Chou
The woman went abroad and began to lose her grip on things.
Read More
Lodestone and Weathervane by Jae Towle
“One never changes the past, Roshelle says. Fundamental misunderstanding. Each incarnation of reality must be internally consistent—that is, if one goes backward in time, it’s not a disruption of the plan; it’s what always happened.”
Read More
My Country ‘Tis: Say My Name by Ru Freeman
they
said it was uncivil but not a crime, it is never a crime when
you die; should I begin from the beginning should I add the women,
Renisha, Rekia, Chantel, Tyisha, Yvette, Gabriella, Miriam, Jessica
On Nerves by Karen Babine
AT SOME POINT, all nerves get old. The body cannot regenerate in ways it is accustomed to doing.
Read More
My Country 'Tis: Love, Philadelphia by Ru Freeman
Rocky is a myth in the air between
us untrue things this American
dream