by Nancy Fulda The vase cracks against the hardened floor of our street-house, splitting into a dozen pieces. Shards fly everywhere – under the workbench, across the floor, even beneath the gears of the big mechanical clock that Grandfather brought down the hill this morning. Everyone in the room freezes.
by Joshua Shaw Midway through her love story, in which we are slow dancing atop a creaky fire escape, a boozy swooning to the snow’s pitter-patter as I say I love you I love you for the first time, I interrupt Eleanor to point out that if she loved me she would stop unscrewing my [...]
By Jeff Pfaller Dane peeled back the chain-link fence so Riley wouldn’t catch her curtain of hair as she ducked through. One more glance at the sliver of road between buildings, really just piles of stone instead of anything functional. No one drove on the Upper Roads this time of night. Driving a car meant [...]
By Anne Carly Abad Every cell in the bud’s body vibrated to the girl’s voice. “Fern, cattail, lily, sedge, violet, anemone,” she imparted her knowledge of the wetlands. They were all distinct, and the bud saw them as the girl did: the fiddleheads that characterized ferns, the creamy clusters of meadowsweet, the heart-shaped leaves of [...]
By Zack Wentz I know the sound of fingers being busted under a boot well. I’ve busted so many. But these boots are not mine. These boots belong to the man holding the Doctor’s Drive, standing on my fingers. So close. So close, we are in this way together touching. My boots are massive [...]
By Julie Sondra Decker Zero “It’s a boy!” I do what newborn babies do. I take my first breath and cry. It’s one of the only times in my life I did what was expected of me. If I’d understood what my father’s words had sentenced me to, the crying would have been on [...]
By Adele Gardner On high-ozone days, we all wear masks, Filtering what air there is to breathe, Supplementing it from oxygen tanks. Still, it pays to walk Slowly. Owls do not have masks. We keep them in a room With potted trees and recycled air And VR walls simulating night That emit a jaguar's warning [...]
By David Falkinburg There’s an open wound across the sky bleeding stars waiting to be bandaged with paper and ink. Fire ashes smoke towards it from a tired history smoldering wanting hope from those stars. Have we forgotten what’s above us? Put down your earthen weight and all those retrograding problems and worn out words [...]
By Changming Yuan A whole box of human hearts, each Still pulsing like a fresh-skinned toad Two rows of shining skeletons of unknown gods All with fingers longer than legs, skull-sized toes Three sets of enchanted knives, possessed By evil spirits (need sharpening) Four giant alarm clocks, guaranteed To wake the dead in a five-mile [...]
By Adrian Simmons At 247 Black Oak Lane stands a perfectly un-unusual house. One story, fireplace, a wooden fence around the backyard, and a chain-link one around the front. The front fence, which most of the other houses on the street do not have, is about the only reason anyone would give it a second [...]