"Bearing Down/Bearing Up" by Hilary Ayshford
Vivienne is pregnant. She shares her news with the office before she's even taken off her coat. People crowd round her. There are hugs...
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- Oct 2, 2022
- 2 min
"Lily of the Valley, Mamma and Me" by Mary Anne Mc Enery
I smell lily of the valley scent—mamas’ perfume — from the flower bouquets in the dayroom. We sit in washable armchairs wearing our...
- Sep 18, 2022
- 2 min
"Cause of Death" by Riley Renwick
He’s chewing on my ankle bones. They split his teeth down to the narrow of it, sharp things that now have jagged edges. He curses me, I...
- Sep 18, 2022
- 2 min
“Leave No Trace” by Alex Miller
Lily is a flower and a girl’s name, but my Lily was a water moccasin and a grizzly bear sniffing for fresh meat. When I bragged about my...
- Sep 5, 2022
- 2 min
"Platonic Pancakes" by J. Archer Avary
I really don’t get how Alexis and Ronny are still together. I was there when she showed up unannounced and chucked a Zippo in his face...
- Sep 5, 2022
- 3 min
"Saying the Name" by Sudha Subramanian
TW: Domestic Abuse She dipped the plastic pot into the water trough and heaved it out, pouring it on herself. Soft ripples streamed down...
- Sep 5, 2022
- 3 min
"Before the Thrill" by Amy Lyons
The man dove his fork into a sea of spaghetti, twirled a fat skein, slurped the wet tails that uncoiled in transit. “Dry cleaning,” the...
- Aug 22, 2022
- 4 min
"Pricks" by Taylor Arnette
A song about soaking in the sun plays over the loudspeakers. I wait in the aisle with the wrists braces and heating pads and watch the...
- Aug 22, 2022
- 4 min
“Boarding School” by Jennifer Dickinson
On the last day I saw her, Reed snuck me a picture. I don’t know how she had one. They’d taken everything from our old lives away. Reed...
- Aug 22, 2022
- 2 min
"Spontaneous" by Avra Margariti
The Clown King finds herself next in a city where people spontaneously combust into a flurry of confetti. Cherry-blossom pink and white,...
- Aug 22, 2022
- 1 min
“Nose Ring” by Karen Arnold
Late afternoon heat makes a jungle of the canal. Curtained by purple Himalayan balsam, carpeted with sulphur yellow water lilies. The...
- Aug 21, 2022
- 2 min
"Momentarily Neither Here Nor There. Until We Are." by Laura Cooney
I sit, You sit, We sit. You’re talking, I’m listening. I can clearly see your lips moving and I can hear the individual words you’re...
- Aug 21, 2022
- 2 min
"Mira" by Amelia David
When I think about the day we met our daughter, I can only recall how much my stomach hurt. I had spent a better part of that morning...
- Aug 7, 2022
- 1 min
“The River's Gift” by Phyllis Rittner
October, seven months after the world stopped, I walk the path by heart. To my left, the river reflects a chalk blue sky as leaves ripple...
- Aug 7, 2022
- 3 min
"Courage" by Hugh Behm-Steinberg
We’re walking down a narrow alley when the people on the balconies above us begin to applaud. Not sure why we might be so entertaining,...
- Aug 7, 2022
- 3 min
“Third Generation” by George Oliver
They start innocuous, as playful mispronunciations of my surname. I blink and the interactions have escalated to being pinned against a...
- Aug 7, 2022
- 2 min
“In the house..” by Anita Goveas
…the man and the woman live without speaking. They’ve turned their attention elsewhere. In the spare room, the woman feeds calciworms to...
- Jul 10, 2022
- 2 min
"Slow Burn" by Mar Ovsheid
The Combustión Lenta chile is a little bomb I swallowed when I was 23 and still absolutely positive I’d live forever, or at the very...
- Jul 10, 2022
- 2 min
"Better To Burn Out" by Samuel Edwards
CW: death/suicide. A bird of flame. A beast of heat. Mythical and magical with a dash of elegance. The Phoenix soars the open skies on a...
- Jul 10, 2022
- 3 min
"A Hot Day on the Prairie, an Unhappy Girl and a Fly" by Maria Thomas
There’s a bovine fly on the screen-door, ripe as a gooseberry and glistening with blood. Mercy ignores the white-noise buzz, cuts the...
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