Inherited Language
By Nick Almeida • If you had grown up in my house, “You’re dollaring me to death” would forever echo in your head. The phrase is one of my mother’s favorites, inextricably linked to any requests for small amounts…
Tag: Humor
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…
Conversations Between Friends: Grant Faulkner and Meg Pokrass
CRAFT is delighted to share a triptych of humorous microfictions by Grant Faulkner, previously included in Best Microfiction 2022. The following pieces take on the subject matter of craft and critical essays from the perspectives of three fictional individuals,…
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…
Sometimes I Feel Lonely in the Diaspora Because I Don’t Have a Mango Poem, So I Wrote a Mango Story by Minyoung Lee
This is a story about oranges. The fruit the rich kids ate when the rest of us ate mandarins. Those kids were nicknamed Orenji-jok and rode fancy cars in Apgujeong. We waited for the winter to buy boxes of…
Genetically Predetermined Chemical Imbalances by Eliot Li
My dead Aunty May visits me while I assemble the baby’s crib. Her pale blue fingers catch my wrist while I’m twisting the Allen wrench to secure the right side panel. Delia, my wife, is at work. Aunty May…
Three Very Sad Homos by Shastri Akella
My Favorite Elvis The boy and the dog were both named Elvis. Whenever Daddy hollered “Elvis” they both came to him. Even when it was one of them he wanted: the boy for a chore, the dog for a…
Hybrid Interview: Sara Lippmann
Essay by Michelle Ross • Since the first time I read a Sara Lippmann story, I’ve been smitten. Among the inventory of qualities I admire is her wit, her raw honesty, her faith in her readers’ ability to keep…
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…
Hybrid Interview: Melissa Broder
Essay by J. A Tyler • Milk Fed made me want to ingest a mountain of delicious, sugary, fatty foods—donuts, chips, pizza, candy—then sprint into the arms of some lusty entanglement. Yet the novel also gave me bouts of…