Fifty Bucks Leftover by Leonard Kress
My husband buys me earrings and hands them to me. I take the box, pry open the lid.
In the Shape of by Matthew Fogarty
That day it was cloudy and there was a grinding noise of gears coming off the clouds muscling into and out of each other, gears like on a car or a freight train but like they’d been winter-rusted.
Vapid by Cooper Renner
Sure, it looked like there were grapes in his jeans. No doubt. This was his fantasy: she’d come and peel him out of his shell, not even say please.
Vladimir and Estragon by Natalia Rachel Singer
He thought we were only company men, loyal but a little dim-witted, the kind of guys who pass the time making simple observations like “Look, a tree,” and “Yeah, that fat guy is really eating a whole chicken and throwing the bones right on the ground.”
Dive by Tom Hazuka
I’m back by the pool table in Shank’s, a dive on the wrong side of downtown, trying not to yawn or stare at the chest of a girl in a tight T-shirt babbling about her ex-boyfriend. Suddenly glass shatters, louder than “Freebird” wailing on the jukebox.