We’re excited to announce the three winners chosen by Judge Deb Olin Unferth! 1. Our Father by Theresa Sylvester “This is an astonishing story, revealing so much about the father in a few words, the complexity of his relationships with his children and the women who bore them. We come to realize this father was…
Nicole spins, smiles, bites Mark’s lip, and coaxes him from the circle. They make slow, cautious love on the pile of Gore-Tex coats in the den. RJ spins, slips Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from the shelf and reads aloud. He sobs and sobs and sobs. The room fills with his warm tears until they’re all bobbing…
Truth or dare: Who did you lose your virginity to? That sorta-kinda-boyfriend I had the summer before college. We both worked at Six Flags. He: the Texas Cyclone. Me: cotton candy. The days: sweaty, sticky. The nights: sweet licks of clove cigarettes that sparked in the dark. Wait, no. The stoner boy who offered me…
The Scarecrow Takes a Series of IQ Tests
Predict the next shape in the pattern. Here is a wolf’s heart. Here is a wooden crucifix. Here is an emerald. Here is one drop of water. Here is a witch’s crushed corpse shoed in jewels. Plunge your hand inside your head and withdraw a fist full of straw. Study the segments. Arrange by lengths.…
Pushed
When I was a girl, a woman in my town died in suspicious circumstances. I still think about the day of the funeral; the spice of the incense as the priest swung the smoking thurible over the closed coffin; my mother’s black skirt, tight on me and the way she plucked in displeasure at the…
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