FLASH FICTION
In the Tearoom by Tara Campbell

I followed Horace’s horns as he walked ahead of me into the tearoom. No matter how many times he visited me, I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes off the silky brown pelt of his neck, or the gentle…
Read MoreBuoyancy by Chloe N. Clark

I carry her in my fingertips when I’m far from home. Feeling the heat of her skin if I press thumb and index finger together hard enough. I can trick myself into her softness if I brush my thumb…
Read MoreCrop Maze by Gary Fincke

In late August, his son began to insist aliens lived in the cornfields that stretched west from the outskirts of the town they lived in. Not playacting. Not childlike. They needed, his son solemnly said, to be ready for…
Read MoreBabushka by Kristen Loesch

The television gives off a low hum, like a bumblebee. Buzz. Buzz. I make the sound too, hoping she will turn away from the screen, but tonight my granddaughter is entranced by the grainy sight of hundreds, thousands of…
Read MoreI Scream, You Scream, We All Scream by Chelsea Stickle

There is a town at the edge of things where women hold in their screams. They die young: high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, cancer. The girls watch their mothers and grandmothers and aunts play Ring Around the Rosie,…
Read MoreMother, Prey by Tara Isabel Zambrano

I was ten when I discovered I had a womb. It bloomed red. The same year I learned about space. Booster rockets to escape gravity, separated and lost forever. My mother bagged items in a grocery store, Mary, an…
Read MoreA Girl Is Grown Like a Poem Is Grown by Abbigail N. Rosewood

A girl is trained first and foremost to satiate and please, to induce salivation from: boys, men, priests, teachers, plumbers, fathers, brothers, dogs, occasionally horses. A girl is trained to survive others’ pleasures, others’ desires, her own saliva…
Read MoreIn Just Thirty Minutes by Jemimah Wei

7. And They Lived Happily Ever After Every day, her father begins with the end. He draws out their meetings like he is Scheherazade, and Death the king. It’s so transparent, but June simply holds her iPhone out. Recording.…
Read MoreThe Barbershop by J. Isaiah Holbrook

On the day I turned fourteen my dad told me I was old enough to go to the barbershop on my own, even though every ounce of me wanted to remain hidden behind his broad shoulders and tuck my…
Read MoreEverything Is Haram and So Are You; or, What to Do with a Birthday Card by Arshia Simkin

In high school, you know a girl who disappears months before graduation. One day, she stops coming to school, and you never see her again. Usually, you avoid the other Muslim kids—the ones who dance to bhangra music during…
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