by Jamie Etheridge | May 9, 2022 | micro
She knocks things over—pyramid-stacked cans in the grocery store, books off the shelf at the library, her father’s glasses from atop his nose. She studied ballet in New York. Or at least that’s what she hopes to do.
At night, she glissades across the Swan Lake tromp l’oeil shimmers on her ceiling. She is graceful, lithe, catlike.
In the daytime, she bumps into lamp posts, people on the street, vendors with neat rings of bagels on wooden staves. Her neighbors shake their heads. Her schoolmates laugh behind their hands. Her mother cries herself to sleep.
The doctors warned them when she was a toddler. A dancer she will never be: Her arches pancaked, her toes pigeon’d, her thighs elephantined. Dream another dream, they insisted.
Still she dances. Still she twirls. Still she spins. Stop moving, her mother, brushing her hair, exhorts.
Still she pirouettes. Still she sautés. Still she pliés. Wake up, her father whispers, it’s time to get ready for school.
She keeps her eyes closed. Still she leaps.
by Joshua Jones Lofflin | May 5, 2022 | flash fiction
I once held two men at gunpoint. This was on a Sunday, after my wife had returned from mass while I repaired our radio. If I held the copper coils just so, a signal would form out of the static, sometimes a speech by the new president, sometimes an opera. I’d managed to tune into the opening strains of Puccini’s Tosca when the men burst through our door. This wasn’t a shock. Everyone was getting robbed those days, and the police were useless. Even so, I told my wife she should call them. The intruders were very helpful and offered to call for us, offered to get the head of police on the line. ―Don’t you understand who we are, they said.
This was after they’d sized up our sitting room and sat heavily on our sofa, on either side of the flower-shaped stain blooming on the middle cushion. They patted the seat for my wife to join them, but she sat in the hard-backed chair in the corner and kept her eyes lowered. I stood, pointing the gun at each of them in turn. It was a replica, but heavy, and my arms were beginning to tire.
―What kind of gun is that, asked the shorter of the two men. He smiled and flashed a gold tooth.
―I don’t know. It’s my brother’s.
This much was true. My brother had gotten it off a film set. Americans used to make movies in our city, and my brother would show off props and autographs he’d gotten. He got us the chair my wife sat on, an uncomfortable thing, but George Clooney had sat in it. He never told me which star used the replica, but I like to think it was Robert De Niro.
―You don’t know? You never handled it before?
―I’m handling it now, I said and I thought I sounded tough. I thought, my wife must think I’m tough, that I’m just like De Niro. My arms trembled, but only slightly.
The man nodded and glanced at his watch, an expensive looking thing. I’m sure it was fake. Everyone wore fake watches those days. I did too, until it was stolen, and now I wondered how much time had passed. Tosca was nearing its last act; soon Cavaradossi would face his executioners.
I asked the men if they wanted water. The short man wanted coffee; the taller, green tea with a wedge of lemon. By the time the police arrived, my wife had refilled their cups three times and Cavaradossi lay dying. My arms now shook badly from the weight of the replica, and it’s from that as much as the explosion that made me drop the weapon. The police were dressed like you see in the movies, with face shields and large rifles, and as my nose was getting broken, I thought it was a shame my brother wasn’t there. He loved cop films. He’d seen them all. He could have told me what kind of explosives blew down my door and whether it was zip-ties or handcuffs they bound me with. I wanted to ask so I could tell my brother later, but a sack was placed over my head, and I could hear nothing beyond a shrill ringing.
My ears still rang at the trial, but not so bad I couldn’t hear the charges: unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful detainment, false reporting of a crime, kidnapping, assault, aggravated assault, assault with attempt to kill, murder, loitering, perjury, discharging a weapon.
―But it was a replica! I cried.
―And contempt of court, the clerk concluded. He said the evidence was incontrovertible. He said there were witnesses.
My brother testified first. He raised his hand and swore that I’d stolen the gun, that I’d stolen from the Americans for years, that it was due to thieves like me that Americans no longer made movies in our city, and wasn’t that why we were so poor? But he whistled his words as if he had no teeth, and even though my eyes were mostly swollen shut, I knew he could not possibly be my brother, that he must be some actor, maybe one of his stuntman friends who were always wearing fake mustaches and dying their hair.
Next, my mother took the stand, leveling her finger at me and saying I was a worthless child, I wet the bed, I never called, I was always skipping mass, and I still hadn’t given her grandbabies. Her finger jabbed the air with each accusation, and I wept at the truth of it all. A uniformed man helped her down from the stand. It was either the tall one or the short one, it was hard to tell. ―Mama, forgive me, I whispered as he escorted her past the dock. ―Haven’t you done enough! he hissed, and I thought I saw a glint of gold in his mouth.
When my wife testified, she spoke in low, tremulous tones. She held up her hand and swore all the charges were true, swore the men had not forced their way through our door, swore they hadn’t torn her dress or taken turns pressing her into the sofa, swore it was lucky the police came when they did, that I was unhinged, that I, I—and here, she brushed her hair from her bruised face as the prosecutor patted her hand, saying go on, go on.
―It was all confusing, she finished, and the judge, in his warm baritone, said she had done well, that she could step down now, and above and around us, the audience burst into applause. Some whistled. Some threw roses. There were shouts of bravo! and encore! above the swell of the orchestra and its deep, rolling timpani. Then the judge sang out his verdict, and I blew my wife a kiss and waited for her to sing the final aria.
by Francine Witte | May 2, 2022 | micro
Like every other night, Finkus creaks the splintery door, slips out of his only shirt and folds it over a chair. He smooths the coarse wool with his calloused hands, wets his thumb and rubs the spots. One, a splotch of mud from when he carried a lady’s valise to a cab. Another one, grease from fixing a wheel on Goldman’s pushcart.
Like every other night, Esther, his wife, looks as empty as bones, and fusses over a stew. A sliver of beef, but mostly the potatoes and carrots that Stein the grocer was going to throw away. Scrape the bad off of everything, he told her, and it will taste like new.
A little girl, she was, in Russia, and one night her father doesn’t come home. Wandered into the wrong part of town and got horse-kicked in the head. Soon after, a smuggled trip to America. Her mother only, and one suitcase between them. Later, she met Finkus, with his smile and his hair and his head of ideas. On her deathbed, Esther’s mother called him a good man, “like your father,” she said.
Like every other night, Finkus slumps onto the floor mattress stuffed with old rags. Too tired to eat. Too weighted down with the illness growing inside of him. The illness that will kick him flat like a horse’s hoof.
Esther will sit alone at the table until the stew cools and wash the plate and put it back in the cupboard. Then, like every other night, Esther will pick up his shirt, and soak spots with hot water and use the kettle steam to smooth out the wrinkles before she sneaks it back over the chair.
And no sooner does she finish, Finkus grunts himself up and comes to the table. Hungry, he is for once. Tonight, won’t be like every other night. Tonight will be the night he tells her about the illness. Isn’t that what a wife is for, he thinks, to share?
He sits down in front of the still-warm plate. He notices his shirt in a way he never has. Cleaner, he thinks, and smoother, too. He looks at Esther for an answer. She looks at him for a smile. Clink of forks on the supper plates. She didn’t ask for this, he thinks, and rather than tell her tonight about the illness, he swallows it down with the stew.
Originally published in Fictive Dream
by JJ Peña | Apr 28, 2022 | contest winner, micro
did you hear about the shooting? my cousin jasmine texts. i tell her no, open up twitter to see if something’s trending. nada. she responds: they shot a girl in her home. she was my friend’s niece. the details: a ten-year-old, a drive-by, some gang shooting up the wrong house, speeding off after unloading, wanted by the cops. i tell jasmine that’s crazy, tragic. where was she hit? i ask, wondering if the girl died fast or slow. all on her side. the side of her head too. she passed on the way to the hospital. i imagine the little girl, one moment in the kitchen, grooving to selena’s bidi bidi bom bom, chewing bubble gum, searching for a night snack, & then, thunderclaps piercing doors & windows & skin: the little girl’s body exploding with black pot-holes, her blood & flesh flying out in fruity-pebbled chunks. she must have been disoriented, heart pounding in her ears—bidi! bidi! she probably didn’t even hear her parents screaming or feel her mother’s hands damning against all the leaking. her last sight must have been her mother’s face, zoo-eyed & blood soaked, cooing, you know i love you. you’re gonna be—& then the world & her heart landsliding into silence. a few minutes later, jasmine follows up with another text: i’m trying to write a poem for her parents, but i don’t know what to say. i give her a writing prompt i once read: pretend you’re a parent who lost a child. imagine what you’d want to hear. write that. i spend the rest of the day thinking, if i were that little girl’s mother or father, i wouldn’t want words, hugs, or photos i’d never seen— i’d want sound, to press my ear to my child’s chest & hear the rise & fall of a loud, palpitating cumbia: bom. bom
by aureleo sans | Apr 25, 2022 | contest winner, micro
In our neighborhood, the dumpsters peel orange but not like citrus. White liquid seeps from their underbelly. Nothing drinks the dumpster milk. Tomcats fight in the periphery while a family celebrates in gunshots. No one thinks of what happens when the bullets fall. We protest the jet-black bars of the windows and the fence. We don’t want to be prisoners of this world. My brother and I scatter out of our home and into the streets like sparrows, avoiding the sidewalk crack. We don’t want to break our mother’s back. She breaks it every day at the La Quinta, cleaning up after lazy tourists. She brings home jars of barely eaten strawberry preserves. When she isn’t looking, we dip our fingers. We are our own freedom fighters, and we race after the rogue chickens, and the Chow Chow who lives by the Panaderia races after us, guarding his sweets. We cross our hearts he does not have rabies. A storm begins to storm, and the gunshots dissolve in the rain. We lope to the sewer drain that has stopped draining, and splish and splash until our mother screams, “That’s how you get ringworm,” and we Charlie Brown inside.
by Catherine Gammon | Apr 21, 2022 | contest winner, micro
I’m not interested, she said, in restless craving, space-time music, outside combining elements. Images only, she said, with a shake of white hair. Minutes later—on time, she said—life, non-human, began to unravel. The Russian beside her—brave, grassy, invasive—was not performing, in his wise place of silence was intensely not performing. She screamed her shallow line, not yet broken by her own odd thoughts. She waited for an interlocutor, but no one came, only spells from hell and unseen books, beauty brief and dwelling among the pollinators, with its and their bristly hungers, a velvet cloud of flower dust invisible in the wake, their lost apocalypse. At the edge of the world, her world, they sat, watching the garden, a planted intersection, a nest creator, as she dove into irony and he sat firmly in staunch heroics, together awaiting catastrophe, breathing the air of their own absurdity, a romantic generation that believed in freedom, doubt, indeterminate expansiveness, all outcomes tragic, the anti-imperialism of imperialism’s beneficiaries, in conversation between certainty and enemy magic. Pesticide, she said, and for a moment he looked as if he might awaken, respond. An endangered profit system, she said, or prophet—silver and gold didn’t move him. The forest, she said, bark beetles, lover, wind, storm. And her companion sat stoic, blinking. Buckle up, she began, but big cats, gold and silver, ran away with her thoughts. She had a kingly elastic temper, staggering in its theatricality. Dusk arose or fell, arrived, to surround, enclose them. Bats and cicadas, a lonesome pine. There’s more, she said. Or thought. One thing more.
by Patricia Q. Bidar | Apr 18, 2022 | micro
I get lost three times en route to the Oakland Airport, ten minutes from home. I have waited for you through a year of your travels. The infrequent social media posts; the even rarer calls. I arrive late. My daughter, you are so small in your sundress and Doc Martens. You wear a kerchief like a girl in a fable.
In baggage claim, we hug and you say you are waiting for your guitar to come out. I breathe you in. The suitcases are gone from the grinding silver track. I point out the little office where people go to ask about baggage that has not appeared in the black rectangle; has not begun an oval trajectory. You get your guitar. I ask about the flight and whether you want to get lunch before I return to work. You smell of patchouli. You have changed on a cellular level and on that level, I can no longer claim you as my child, as is my instinct. I feel a sensation like falling backward.
We go for Chinese food. Since I saw you last, you have slept in the car and in a tent and in national parks. In groups and with your boyfriend and his dog, neither of whom we know. You have climbed Pike’s Peak and seen an eclipse and texted that one day you will get an image of it tattooed on your skin. I don’t ask about the citation for vagrancy in Asheville. I don’t ask if you’ve stayed on your medication. I don’t ask whether he treats you well, or how long you will stay.
Instead, I ask you if you want anything at the Health Food store across the parking lot. In fact, I need a few moments to step away. I need to catch up to where we are in this Chinese restaurant that was always your favorite growing up.
You are my child but no longer mine or a child. I want to give you something you need. I want you to accept it and then have this small new connection. I no longer have to choose between bus fare and food, as I did when I was pregnant with you.
I say I will be right back. You touch your palms delicately to the sides of your teacup. You say you will wait.
by Barbara Diehl | Apr 14, 2022 | micro
Because she is still shaking the doorknobs of this broken farmhouse the cyclone heaved from its foundation and dropped like an anvil on someone’s feet in ruby slippers. Because she still dreams she strolls through a field of poppies, poppies, poppies and breathes the opium breath of forgetfulness but always wakes in wheat. Because she can’t forget those scenes in Technicolor so she squeezes the pigment of the shoes’ red sequins onto her palette. Because she regrets the return to the sepia tones of the Kansas prairie. Because she can’t shake the Lion awake and the Scarecrow is still hellbent for Emerald City and the Tin Man is heartless. Because she wants to forget that she was the one who promised him a heart and to forget that the crows are descending on the crops back home and to forget that she has to be king of her own forest. Because the paint on a bristle brush is a Tin Man’s axe to the canvas that stretches flat and straight as a road alongside a Kansas cornfield and poppies are a siren song through the sheaves. Because she still hears monkey wings and fighting trees in the April wind and hears poppies, poppies, poppies in her brush. Because she knows how to paint the burner flames below her Omaha State Fair balloon. Because she can’t wait for a cyclone to take her.
by Yvanna Vien Tica | Apr 11, 2022 | micro
1.
Reduce
The first night you eat Peking duck. It is not your first time to consider ducks as food or something less than the geese who always know where to go during winter: your mother used to cook it for your birthday. To this day, you don’t know her ethnicity, and They don’t offer any words, only say you are some version of Asian. The marinated head sinks halfway through the pool of sauce, the beak broken off and discarded. They try coaxing you into staring at something more than the duck’s eyes, burnt and cratered. You will never eat ducks again; They will think ducks have magic that bewitches you, and you will never correct them.
2.
Reuse
The houses start looking the same; all the faces are gilded masks you know better than to peek into. Those eyes insulate and sneak bits and pieces of you before you realize someone’s touched your robe. The power’s gone, you would say, but no one’s listening. She’s doing better every day, They say. Your mother threw her shirt at you before They arrived; you sleep in it every night, finger the quaint butt holes lingering in her cigaretted memoir. It’s the only book you like to read, and later, when the soccer girl calls you a name a white man once called your mother, your fingers flex her face, redraws it in some uglier line.
3.
Recycle
During the drive home, They—or the radio, you can’t tell—ask why, why you stood there gazing at the bleeding girl, unmoving. The last chords sizzle as They turn the car. We’re trying, They say. You watch a Walmart plastic bag flee something across the road and blink when it stops, a skinny evergreen branch thrust through its pellucid skin. They crush the knob under key-stained fingers, direct those curses at anything but you, stuffing the red-face, heaving delirium inside for the social worker. Tension snaps across the windshield, and the Walmart bag is floating somewhere between the space of the branches. Tell Them they’re not the first. Tell Them you don’t want to be proselyted into a Chanel bag. Tell Them Walmart is good enough. But say only your marooned, cliché wasted-breath wish:
Let’s go home.
by Nova Wang | Apr 7, 2022 | flash fiction
At dusk, we snuck into the backyard and planted birdseed by the drive. This was so robins would sprout out of crabgrass and dirt, talons curled around rock, wings opened like palms. Our mother glared from the door, said flight cannot be born from earth. Nothing grows from its opposite, but we ignored her because this couldn’t be true. After all, we emerged from the hollows she left behind, one twin for each fist, each hole punched through the kitchen wall. Our bodies birthed from negative space. That was what it meant to be her daughters: to grow around the spaces she made, to be her reflection split in two.
So we stole sunflower seeds from the pantry and tucked them into the earth, dirt gritting under our nails. We had to grow the birds we harvested because that was the only way to tame them, leash their flight, and brand it with a name. It would be harder to control something wild, and we didn’t know if we could catch them fast enough to name, to give them the only weapon we could yield: identity’s collapse into sound, collecting on the tongue like firepowder before the shot.
Our mother had taken two weeks to name us, delaying ownership as our bodies crumpled, small as the birth certificates on the desk. All the names she’d prepared were male—Andrew, Michael, James—sturdy enough to withstand her pride. I wanted someone strong, she said as she ironed our father’s shirts, someone who would carry their name beyond themselves, solid in the lineage of blood. Steam fogged her face and blurred it into a single exhale. She always spoke like she was ending a breath, words balanced on the edge of speech. One night, I pried open her mouth to see if her tongue was cut into a comma. Maybe that was why she lived in a pause, suspended between one body and the next, unsure how to proceed from mother to child. Maybe that was why she didn’t know how to pass on her name, its syllables leaking through her lips as we took our father’s instead. But her tongue lay in her mouth, whole and unslit. When I released her jaw, her teeth clacked together and she awoke, spitting in my face.
No matter how many boys she prepared for, we tumbled forth in our girlbodies, four fists closed, our crime twinned in the doctor’s gloved hands. The names our mother finally gave us began with sh: Shirley, Sherry. She wanted the sound of shushing, silence engraved in our throats, but we likened them to freshly honed knives. Metal whispering, emerging from water and stone. The way our father wielded his voice like a blade, shredding air around our heads. The way we sharpened our names against teeth and spat them across the yard, voices high and saliva-bright.
In the afternoon, we competed the distance we could fly our names. Positioned ourselves against the house and aimed for the road, cars whipping our hair into a storm. We took turns and counted how many selves we could seed in gravel, syllables dissipating against dirt. How many leaves we could cut with breath, sliced along their spines, broken halves like feathers released to the earth. Once, I held up a leaf and replaced half my sister with its broken blade, her limbs emerging around the other side. Her body, growing out of green. This was how we home-grew ammunition, vowel by splintered vowel, birdseed like shrapnel in our palms.
At dawn, we stole into the yard where robins flapped their dusty wings, talons rooted to the ground. We snuck on feet choked of sound. Locked hands around their necks and pulled them from the earth, burying their wings against our chests. We could only catch two a day—the remaining birds rushed into the sky when we arrived—but we knew to take what we could and wait. After all, we learned patience before we learned our names.
We huddled against the back of the house and held the birds at arms-length, their necks strangled in our fists. The scientific name for American robins was Turdus migratorius, but it was marred by too many centuries to use. To own something, you had to name it yourself, so we readied our mouths. Baptized birds in sound as their throats twisted, too choked to object. To reject our claim on their bodies, their flight. They should feel lucky, we said, that we named them the morning they appeared. We knelt and readied our knives, so sharp they barely whispered against flesh. Their throats opened red and warm, a cry that bathed our hands in blood.
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