FLASH FICTION
Sibling Circus & Hooked by Meg Pokrass
Sibling Circus My brother was addicted to dog biscuits and this might have been how our act started. When our mother arrived, he’d pop one in his mouth, throw one to the real dog and then toss one to…
Sibling Parenting & Father’s Day by Shih-Li Kow
Sibling Parenting Ai Ping’s brother said women who habitually declared they found happiness in everyday things were the hardest to please. If a woman required x affirmations of happiness a day, each having an effect which lasted an average…
Birds x Bees by Katharine Duckett
Esther was sixteen the summer that all the bees in her father’s hives died. Those were the days when she was in love with everything. The curtains in her room, billowing with the morning breeze; the spongy hills leading…
Penny, Barbara, Ruth, Irene by Amy Grote
After three gin martinis, my mother-in-law spits out her teeth. “You’re a cannonball with a credit card,” she hisses. Her dentures glisten like pearls in her palm. Never, she likes to remind me, did she foresee her sweet son…
Flapping Wings and a Shoeless Walk by Sudha Balagopal
My daughter, Savi, instructs me to wear shoes when I go for my morning walk. She says it’s not considered exercise otherwise. I tell her my toes feel imprisoned in shoes and slide my feet into chappals before I…
When You Visit Manhattan on Saturday and Your Boyfriend Who Lives in Queens Says He Can’t Come by Nathan Xie
after Jenny Offill On the hour-long train ride to New York City, you read a book about a divorce that almost but doesn’t quite happen. Your boyfriend says he’s knocked out from miscellaneous paperwork and allergy headaches and his…
House of Cicadas by Gabriela Lee
Aboveground I was twelve years old when I last saw Blanca Esperanto. She lived at the end of the road. Their house was a brown, dry affair of rustling wood and dark leaves. She loved sitting on the ledge…
The Replacement by Paul Rousseau
4. It is prom night. A group of us are out to eat at The Urban Hive, on the rooftop. Couples sit in pairs around a table forged of meteorite. Smoky black, with a network of tiny bubble cells,…
There Are Hundreds of Beautiful Asian Women Waiting to Meet You by Tessa Yang
Later, you’ll claim there were warnings. Unusual bird calls. That double rainbow you snapped for Instagram. A knowing gleam in the eyes of the hibachi waitress. To make sense of a thing is to make it your own, and…
Mom, Chronicled (January) by Tyler Barton
I was a lucky little kid, and I’m a luckier little whatever this is now. —Mom, Diary (January 2021) Not sharing is what they call it when one puppy eats another’s dinner, drawing blood from anything that tries to…