“My brother is dying,” my mother tells me over the phone, her voice spilling down the line, a thin stream of water over the lip of a dam. My mother says the word dying like it’s a question. As...
Jacqueline Doyle Manka curled up on her white linen couch with a glass of Pinot Noir and opened the new New Yorker to the fiction page. On the left there was an illustration of a snowy...
I was several blocks away, kicking a soccer ball against a cinder block wall. In the hospital that evening I stood alone in the fluorescent hall. I didn't believe a bit of it. Was Gawk in the room...
Christian A. Winn Yesterday the boy I pretend is David phoned. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “Happy birthday.” It was not my birthday, and I told him so, as I always do. “I miss you...
Jenny Xie I learn about Dustin’s death through Facebook. I am at work, taking a lunch of grilled chicken and broccolini at my desk, a diet prescribed by my pregnant Trisha, who now insists that I...
Joshua Ferris After a long silence—during which we pulled our troops from Vietnam, the dreary events of September 11th precipitated the collapse of Iran, and the Quixotic landed safely upon the red...
Jennifer Murvin I always borrow the babies during the last week of September, when it is warm enough to have the children outside in strollers but cool enough for my navy coat, the one with...
Todd Seabrook Joel had a wedding and we all went. The groomsmen played bocce on the grass, all of us throwing the balls, red, yellow, blue, green, all the colors and all the balls, throwing...
Alexandra Lytton Regalado Máma Carmen said Ada came to burden her life because she was born blue-eyed. Not that milky grey that most new mothers boast about. Later, you see those same babies...
Amy Minton This rickety fishing-boat-turned-dive-charter stinks of fish guts and flowery aerosol. Planks around the wheelhouse are freshly painted—maybe yesterday, maybe last week. Nothing ever...
