When Danny turned six, his mouth rotted and a host of flies swarmed his lips. They laid their ugly eggs beneath his tongue and zipped right through the holes in his gums. Nana washed his mouth out with Listerine and soap, scolding him for not being more careful. For...
Take one pair of lightly-arched, freshly-manicured feet, slip off your mother’s gold-edged chappals that always chafed, and plant them firmly in the soft Mangalorean soil of your exacting grandfather’s garden Rub at your slightly turned-in ankles, that resemble your...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
These 20 stories thrilled us with their specific and creepy details, their attention to character, and their surprises in plot and language! This shortlist has been sent anonymously to Amber Sparks! A Modern Fairytale Double the Fun Monster Diary The Bottom of a Well...
Father says he built the house back in Poland and hauled it with him across the Atlantic. The story goes: once, there was a field, and in the field, there was a cabin, and inside the cabin was a man, and inside the man’s stomach was a house. He gave birth to it during...