It’s not that Melodie is strange in some way, really she just wants in the same way that everyone wants something. She’s turned magical in her obsession.
Melodie Wants the Moon by Kelsey Ipsen
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Interviews
We Wonder by Yasmina Din Madden
We wonder about the man across the street for a long time. The way he hacks at his bushes with an axe, without rhyme or reason, without any sort of plan.
Scar Tissue by Sabrina Hicks
The night we played twenty-one questions, you asked me to tell you something real about myself then laughed and said, even though you have no heart.
Negotiations by Beckie Dashiell
It is a ghost who whispers in my ear at night: it’s not natural to share a bed with the same man for so long.
Lambda by Mandira Pattnaik
The night before my parents moved to Delhi, Lambda reclined on his armchair, bony legs like long strokes joined at the knee.
Tonight What Faces by Rick Bailey
I’m looking in the mirror, wondering if I can be an honest best man. Outside the October air is balmy. In the distance I hear lawnmowers.
Aftertaste by Susmita Bhattacharya
I surf cookery videos on YouTube. Watch how potato chips are fried. Follow the step-by-step of making hot, puffed up chapattis. I feed my cravings with my eyes only.
Used Hearse by Sandie Friedman
She bought the hearse used from the Highlands Funeral Home, and the first time she drove it home to show Patrick, she felt invulnerable.
Negative Capability by Josh Russell
After her wife dies (cancer, brain, sudden), she watches lectures her wife recorded for her students, videos she’d never seen while Pam was alive.
Protrusions by Misty Urban
They’re called mandibular tori, and yes, since you’re asking, they do hurt, a little, often, not in a take-me-to-the-dentist-immediately way but in an ongoing, low-grade, what-can-you-do-but-learn-to-live-with-it kind of way.
Trip-trapping by Sara Hills
The autumn I turn ten, we leave my dad and the crusted expanse of Arizona desert, hard-packed sand dotted with dried grass and shriveled cacti, for the suburbs of Chicago.
Pigs Die by Constance Malloy
I envied the pigs their voice. They weren’t silenced. Well, not before the electrocution or before the Hog Sticker with his 18-inch blade sliced the swine’s throats as they hung upside down.
En Aeropuertos by Pat Foran
I’m in a line, a line of lines, waiting to check in for my flight to Monterrey. The line isn’t moving.
Uncle by Anthony Varallo
Uncle says we are not to disturb him when he is in the basement. Because the basement is his place. His. Got it?
Last Day by Briana Maley
You wake up thinking not about dying, but about Trina DeMartini and the inside of her warm mouth and all the places you want her to put it, and maybe if you’re being honest a little bit about your Algebra teacher.