It is impossible to fold the same piece of paper seven times. 1. You wrote inside the lines. Your textbooks neat, unmarked, while ours were brazen with graffiti. Sometimes, I sat next to you when I came in late. You sat so still, as though you were trying to...
Plan to Free The dog ate the turkey. Then killed all the village swans, piled the white corpses at the front door, impossible to hide, a pyre to be paid for with exile. In the orange school bus, every morning and afternoon, no matter the snow or dust, we’d lower the...
The top drawer of the old bureau painted to look new held thirty-six onesies, freshly laundered and folded into tiny squares and arranged just so, like a box of strawberry fudge. The highchair Meryl’s coworkers at the diner had pitched in to buy stood like an empty...
We're proud to announce the 25 titles of our shortlist! The submissions we received were resonant, inventive, and so engaging that we've had a hard time narrowing down the list! From this list, judge Sian Griffiths will choose her final 3 winners and 5 honorable...
Yonder Years Ago So down a synapse they tunneled, carried past sensation burdens: memory waves chute-oscillated, irrigated crevices and canals to harvest minds and remember electric journeys in flashes and sparks. Disconnected and torn, hand-in-hand they went,...
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...