Lost Centuries by Shome Dasgupta Motherhood: A Hexaptych by Candace Hartsuyker Nothing the Wind Might Sting by Edie Patterson A Nice Blue Place by David Byron Queen A Guide to Small Town Ghosts by Regan Puckett Lessons in Negative Space by Sara Hills
When the semi flipped on its side, cows were launched like bowling pins across multiple lanes. Several died inside the truck. Eventually, many uprighted like dice. The driver lay dying, his belly forming pleats on the steering wheel. After slamming into an ice...
There were aliens in What Cheer, Iowa, aliens with platinum skin and tentacles adept at probing populations, aliens opening up minds and internal organs, flaying off skin and sinew with minimal host damage, aliens who knew their work was little more than basic...
Baby, when the toast goes cold, the butter will not spread. The daffodil fat just sits on stiff bread. You can make it work, sure. Smear on strawberry jam, mash an avocado, fry an egg and let the residual heat warm you. You can reheat toast and endure endless...
We are weary in sweat and heat that settles like skin to skin. Deep in the buzz and whir of small things, dragonflies, mosquito blood suck. We left his car a mile back, broke down again. “What are you giving up for me?” he asks. Accusing is a love right, and any...
Francisco looks down the long wintry road. Wisps of mist hang over the dark trees. The sound of the cooling engine fills his ears, click, click, click. He takes his hands out of his pockets and checks his watch. He will give them fifteen minutes, no more, no less. His...
She’s Splenda-sweet salvation, preened by her parents, who do everything in a -ly way: welcome you hesitant-ly, talk about you loud-ly, watch you knowing-ly before you know why. Your church girl is daisy socks, French braids, smiley-face pancakes. She’s citrus shampoo...
In the beginning, the women were gooseberries. Plump on the vine, squashed under toe, murderous towards pine. When the rains fell, they became millipedes, scrabbling in pain for warm dirt. When the air dried, they jumped into the pond, careening as frogs, then...
I live in a haunted house. By which I mean I live inside your throat. By which I mean I’ve grown so used to this haunted place that it has become unhaunted. I greet the ghosts. The ghosts are my friends. You said you wished to press me into your chest, all the way,...
When she knew she couldn’t keep me, my mother struck a bargain with the ghost men haunting the sky. She fashioned a ship from our placenta—my fuel, her breast milk. The cost of this launch came from her ignorance, her worship of the bone-pale deities that called...
The pocketknife lies open in the dirt, and the snake—headless, milky-translucent muscle—curls in and out, while the girl watches its rhythm, the way it moves not in defeat but in defiance of her father. Sucker should be dead, he says. Still, it dances. Years later, in...
She gets off the bus at the tenth stop. She walks one mile. She walks 280 more feet. She pays in damp cash from the cup of her bra, curled and crunched, soft with the smell of agua de violetas and sweat. Like a baby’s head. The man at the desk smiles, his maw a...