CHEETO DUST • by Paula Morton
Bucky is late again. This ticks me off, since I have to cover for him. Yes, I’m the best waitress this dive has ever seen, but a bartender I’m not. What did you expect? I ask myself. After living with… Continue Reading
Surreal
BIRDIE • by Lisa Ahn
The third year of drought left Birdie motherless and mute. For months she’d listened as her parents argued over water, whether small reserves should go to mama’s flower business or the horses. In the end, as hard as it would… Continue Reading
POUR OUT YOUR SONG • by Alex Sventeckis
Nestled into his red clay divot, Sebastian aimed the green laser pointer high into the clear night, and a rocket ship of light launched from the desert scrub. He squinted as he followed the rocket’s luminescent green contrail up to… Continue Reading
WORD CRIME • by Ken Poyner
He hated to be here. The stalls were uneven, some narrow, some wide, some with a draw curtain, many with a rope stretched side to side with hanging rags on that rope as a door front. Many looked like they… Continue Reading
THE LOOP THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN • by Helen French
Deep in the concrete bowels of the Tate Modern, I grow large and choose my form. I become strips of aluminium, curved into arches, then glued together, banded into long cylinders. When I am ready and no one is looking,… Continue Reading
MIRROR, MIRROR • by A.J. Rocca
Tucked away in some little-known corner of time, there once was a glassblower who lived by the sea. In the daring years of his youth, the glassblower would pull all kinds of strange and wonderful shapes from out of colored… Continue Reading
THE DEATH HUNTER • by A.L. Bradshaw
Not everyone could see the Death Hunter, but Martha had the gift. When the clouds first gathered on the low desert horizon that year, she knew: He was close. Her mother would have called it her ‘ghost-notion’, and crossed herself… Continue Reading
MICHIGAN BECOMES THE ATLANTIC • by Kyle Siegel
He awakes to a trickle from his left nostril. The grass is comforting beneath M’s skull; he lifts his head, slowly, tasting slight dirt. Eyes open to the shoreline he heard through the blackout. The water is choppy, exuberant under… Continue Reading
ITERATION 9 • by Stephen Buoro
He was a perfect baby. He never cried. He rarely pooped. He told me everything with his eyes: hunger, lovesickness, cold. His eyes: large grey irises, watery, luminous, like the eyes of the cat my ma had put to sleep… Continue Reading
MORPHOMETESIS • by Michael Allen Rose
I saw it while taking out the garbage, the biggest beetle I’d ever seen. It lay on its back, black and shiny like plastic wrap. The insect kicked its segmented legs in the air like a futile attempt to ride… Continue Reading