FICTION
There Is in This Dirty Night a Running Chase Off and Away by Jim Bosiljevac
There is in this dirty night a slam and a shout and there is Matthew yelling Pa Pa they got Owen Pa wake up Pa they got Owen! And before any of this there is Shin out of his…
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Of All the Infinite Possibilities by Dana Diehl & Melissa Goodrich
The topic is prehistoric humans and their place in the food chain. It says so right in the substitute lesson plan. Highlighted in yellow and underlined. Well shoot, I think. I’d hoped I’d be teaching something I already knew…
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Lasso by Essie J. Chambers
It’s the summer before third grade, and I’m not allowed to play in the front yard anymore. Mamma says it’s because of the heat, but I know it’s about the police cars that circle our house like sharks. The…
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The Shape of Skin by Kristina Jipson
The professor’s kid was cute. Like, normal cute. Pigtails and a fat face. She looked kind of dirty even though I don’t think she was. She had that kind of skin. “Babysitter problems,” the professor had said at the…
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Passing by Thaïs Miller
I. Jason On the brink of Armageddon, I find myself in Stark County, drinking. We’re underground in a bunker, a former stockroom in the basement of a grocery store that’s been converted into a wartime bar. Patrons, in their…
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Heart Trouble by Rex Adams
The nurses, cafeteria workers, surgeons, Harold, they all irritated Darla. So did the old man in the room next door. He was dying, had been for days. Family kept streaming out of the elevator, stomping down the hallway and…
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So Much Trouble by Karin Lin-Greenberg
Katherine had only intended to spend a few minutes outdoors wiping the birdhouse with vegetable oil, but now, over an hour after she’d started, she stood in the front yard, an oil-drenched wad of paper towels in one hand,…
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Diamondback Mountain by Tim Weed
Henry takes the stairs three at a time, balancing a tray with a pot of coffee and two of the lodge’s signature blue-enamel mugs. An inch of fresh powder frosts the windowsills, and the light slants in to illuminate…
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Eating Strawberries with Strangers by Pia Ghosh-Roy
I was walking with the broken pieces of my day in a thin cloth bag when I saw them sitting by the river, three women with the sun setting on their hair. They were eating strawberries, drinking rosé in…
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Flash from City by the Sea by Doug Ramspeck
Doppelganger In his dreams the people of the city are ghosts. The writer is walking down a crowded sidewalk, but the pedestrians around him are made of mist or smudges of light or dust. They speak in the…
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