FICTION
A Little Like Hope by Jason Jackson
O was twenty-nine when he died, and now he lives in my head. He says it’s like swimming. He can’t breathe. “You don’t have to,” I say. “You’re dead.” But he just sighs. At first, there was a lot of…
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“Kuchizi” by Lucas Schaefer
Carlos Ortega roaming Africa was a ridiculous proposition, which was why everyone who heard the idea savored its deliciousness. For all his thirty-nine years, Carlos had prowled the same few blocks east of the interstate, and to conceive of him…
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“Beyond Love” by James Winter
I A week ago, in downtown Amman, Jordan, suicide bombers entered the public park near the American embassy. The blasts shattered windows along the ground floors of the looming, gated government buildings on Umawyeen Street, which dead-ended at Qaherah to…
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“Mule Brigade” by Kenan Orhan
In the mountains on the way to Iraq, the lieutenant’s jeep pulls over. He hops out the back and takes a few, crunchy steps through the snow down the hill. He has to piss again. “Is it healthy?” Corporal Kayaoğlu…
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“The Deepest Part of the Lake” by John Haggerty
The most exciting thing that ever happened around town was when they found out that Russian mobsters from LA had been dumping bodies in the lake. It was the bridge, arcing gracefully out over the narrowest but deepest section of…
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“Children Will Drown In Water Like This” by Rachel Luria
The girl watches the boy from the kitchen window. He’s fishing in the canal, which is little more than a drainage ditch, but it does have fish and maybe a gator. The boy knows she is watching, so he casts…
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“The Color of Water” by Joshua Jones
i. The ocean below is a slab of stone, stretching endlessly beyond the tips of the plane’s wings. Only dabs of cloud interrupt it, and Rishi is bored. His mother’s phone won’t come on. It’s still too hot. It always…
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“Mulberry Street” by Madiha Sattar
Lucy doesn’t understand where I’m from and bends forward at me with a frown and shouts “where?!” when I say Pakistan, so at some point I started saying Atlanta, Georgia instead. And she doesn’t understand what I do for a…
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“Brothers” by BD Feil
LAST. Barney looked over to the far feedhole where Luther pitched hay slow and steady with his head down and it was the way he worked at everything. Light from the stalls underneath floated up like batter into the dark…
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“Watershed” by Jack Noland
Distilling a city to its essence is a fool’s errand, but Dublin in December tests the fool. It’s all magnified: wind-blown rain; the serious, northern-latitude darkness that drives pub traffic and tea sales; a high holiday looming that’s both hearty-Catholic…
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