The End by Shaun Levin
We have nothing left to say but neither of us wants to get up. Tell me a joke, I say. You say you’re bad at jokes, you never remember them, especially not in English.
Mom’s new boyfriend is a liver fluke by Cole Beauchamp
He attached quickly (can I buy you a drink, let’s hook up, sure I’ll meet your kid), slid into our house unnoticed (toothbrush here, pair of socks there) and two months on, here we are, host and Fasiola Herpatica.
Farmland by Elizabeth Conway
Above-ground the turquoise pool is the only color for miles. A stain on the landscape, it is obvious it doesn’t belong. It belongs. To a fourteen-year-old girl born with a heart condition.
Gallows Pole by Kathy Hoyle
In the dead of summer, while the whiptails hide in sagebrush shadows, and everything blisters in the amber heat and there ain’t nothin but buzzards hummin for miles around, a hanged man dances on a gallows pole.
You, Visitor by Jane O’Sullivan
You don’t like her much, not that you can tell her that. Slugging along behind you, hands in pockets. Sullen as a fish despite the fucking dawn rising over the city, the glory of it.