micro

The rifle leans by the cabin door. The gray window is cold to the touch. The mother sucks something from her thumb as she sets out the toast rack, her bare toes curling to grip the woven rug. Her nails have gotten quite long. The girl comes down the stairs, nodding...

It takes thirty years for my older sister to swim here from the Pacific coast. She no longer has vocal cords or letters on her mind. Instead, she blinks rapidly. Raises a pale webbed hand out of the breeze-ruffled water. I know exactly what she means. She doesn’t...

CW: kidnapping But we were so young and our parents were hippies, and our music came from the garage band up the street that played Wild Thing over and over because it was the only song they knew, and it was summertime and the only rule was to come home before dark,...

So sudden you didn’t have time to put your hair on. So loud your eardrums hurt. Who are these people who have stormed into your kitchen? Why does the woman loot your cupboards, the man produce a knife? The woman’s voice reminds you of your daughter’s, but your...

We feed the ghoul behind the elementary school crumbs of bread and throw sticks at it to make it dance. We watch its grotesque movements, our heads ducked down, squinting in fear, until our mothers call us for dinner, garbled words painting a language that skips down...

I’m scratching my name in the pew with my car key. I’m daydreaming about what it would be like to have a robot arm. Or a robot heart. I’m sitting while the believers line up for communion. I’m not invited, which is fine. The only flesh I want in my mouth is yours. I...

in her bedroom like a secret, only we can hear it through the door. My big brother, Lou, took off with Ernesto, the boy with the neck tattoo of skull and bones, who picks up my brother in his Cadillac car, and they both will be gone for a week. I scatter the little...

Kat goes missing again, but not really. She’s where she usually is—passed out, pants on backward, in the Wawa parking lot. Because this is her third or fourth offense, the dean of students summons her parents who drive eight hours through a freak April snowstorm. This...

Their old landmarks are charred, the ashen sludge slips into her sandals. Find me at our pit, he’d said. Where you dig for fossils. He should be waiting for her, always the last to arrive. Pine cones crackle, the sap hums in creaks and snaps. Stumps hiccup out sparks....

1. When planning your garden, be aware that certain herbs are highly invasive, and may overwhelm a garden, choking other plants. Properly managed and carefully monitored, however, these herbs are both decorative and useful. In order to keep them from dominating more...

The Stuntman Cuts through the water like shears through velvet. Like an arrow through the apple on a little boy’s head. Like any number of sharp things through lovely, yielding softness. The suit and mask hide his tan leanness, his dark curling hair. The webbing on...