James Sullivan The tree still had most of his needles, and although Carly had been at first against our adopting him, something forlorn and shaggy in his expression convinced her, as it had me, and...
Lauren Barbato I. Lisa meets Jenny the day after Christmas in the Burger King parking lot off Broadway. Jenny wears a black-and-gray checkered scarf with a braided fringe. Lisa recognizes the scarf...
Callie G. Mauldin You push the church’s gate door open and walk past the wild verbena, fuchsia palls of fire at your feet. Your heartbeat quickens. The church’s box-shaped form could be mistaken...
Angela Yang 1. The man printed on the insecticide can wears oversized boots and taut muscles. He looks like he has seen all types of cruelty, grown disinterested, and so turned to benevolent killing....
Alma García We are deep, at twenty-seven thousand feet and counting on the east side of the Great Ridge, and we have been ruptured. We are tearing apart. We will remain calm. This is not our first...
Jared Green The box arrived during the period we would come to call Early Pandemic. We would speak of this time as though it were a distant geological era, a deep stratum, dense with meaning, in...
Blair Hurley Mostly, missing her old life before the baby isn’t a conscious thing. She’s too tired to have a thought like that, with actual words and sentences. It’s more a fuzzy sense of...
Jody Rae It’s a party hosted by people in my old neighborhood, so that should have been my first clue. I bring the girls, against my better judgment, but I want to see old faces, and it has...
Gregg Maxwell Parker Winner of the 2021 Spring Fiction Contest Several men bump her as she goes down the steps. Everyone is coming out as she is going in. It is afternoon, people are...
Stephanie Yu The goat baby was exactly as described: half goat, half baby. Born in the dead of night under a new moon. The labor, as it had been foretold, had been difficult. The vessel split open,...
