FLASH FICTION
What the Mouth Knows by Amina Gautier
We search the face of every old Puerto Rican man we meet, hoping to see our grandfather’s face looking back at us. The way to and from school is paved with old brown Boricua men. Up Riverdale and Rockaway,…
Fangs by Tara Isabel Zambrano
The monsoon our mother delivers a boy, we’re saved from our father’s anger. Our hands are raw, unrecognizable, carrying hot water, tugging clean sheets beneath our mother’s heels, taut like our names. The baby looks whittled out of a…
The Life Cycle of Fire by Rosaleen Lynch
We can’t take Mam’s new baby to school, the boys guess as much from my silence and nobody wants Mam to wake and make Baby cry, so when I put him to feed there’s quiet, just suckling sounds and…
When It Gets Cold in the South, You Get a Jesus, You Get a Jesus, Everybody Gets a Goddamn Jesus by Exodus Oktavia Brownlow
Honey, MS, 1973 I When it gets cold in the South, Mama puts Devilish-Daddy out, again. It’s where he belongs, she says, cold is like warm milk to funny daddies like the one y’all got. All it gone do…
Coming Home to Myself by Bryan Okwesili
I am humming along to Lucky Dube’s voice over the radio on the windowpane. The cavernous room swallows his tenor, leaving his words bare, airy, like scattered feathers in the sun. I do not know what it means to…
Bear by Ben Loory
My wife and I went camping one day. It was nice! But that night, we met a bear. He came into our tent and sat down and stared at us, kept pawing sort of sadly at the ground. What…
The Sluagh by Kendra M. Pintor
You’re looking through the hole in your father’s shoulder like it’s a spyglass. Or a kaleidoscope. Except, it isn’t either of those things. It’s a long, dark tunnel, and the other side isn’t magnified or broken into crystal fragments.…
My Father Takes Me to the Rodeo by Francine Witte
And that’s when I know what I want to be. Not the cowboy, flailing all spaghetti in the afternoon sun. But the horse bucking and shaking that small man off his back. My father was out of work again.…
Contingencies by Susan Perabo
This is what you do if he wakes up sad. This is what you do if he comes home angry. This is what you do if he stops taking his medication. This is what you do if he stays…
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…