Pumpkin
byWith the roarin’ hum of the horseflies and the baking midnight heat, our little patch of Texas coulda been the center of the equator. Some patcha paradise, hidden in some…
Stories
Check Engine
byYour check engine light comes on because it loves you. This is my working hypothesis. This is not what the sensor will tell you, but what do they know? Those…
The Verbs
byCynthia Scoffs maintains a list of people she’s met who also have verbs for last names, including: Terrance Beat Jill Bent May Blanche—extra points for the modal auxiliary verb Oscar…
Albert
byAlbert came from a synthetic embryo built from their parent’s stem cells. “It’s so much easier this way,” their mother had explained. But Yu is convinced Albert turned out all…
Woman with Cannonball
byJonah studied American History for four years and came out of his degree still a patriot. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe that America had done some stuff that wasn’t…
The Lifespan of a Mourning Dove
byI was walking on 30th near Grape Street, where I live, and saw a man painting an apartment building all by himself. Right then I was thinking about how I…
Parakeet
byHe had expected worse. The inevitable letdown after Christmas, the dead parakeet, the New Year’s to come, everything that had happened. But it wasn’t bad. It felt almost good, even,…
Not of This World
byThe nurses arrived throughout the day, a steady invasion of Laiken’s privacy. At breakfast, they balanced trays of lukewarm scrambled eggs, cups of tepid green tea. Later, they’d come and…
The Eaters
byWE CALLED OURSELVES THE EATERS BECAUSE WE ATE WHAT WE WERE SERVED. Every final Friday of the month, we got together as a group to devour as much as we…
No Grand Passion
byAFTER I WAS ABLE TO SCREW MY HEAD BACK ON TIGHT, they told me I’d swam ashore. Finally, I’d swam ashore after many years living on K Street with the…