Once again, we had trouble deciding which stories should make the longlist, so here are 51 stories in contention! We'll be back shortly with the shortlist! Siempres & Wedding Cake The right to bear arms Mud Angels Bethany Keratin High Peasant...
That July, all our dreams were bones. T-rex bones, kneecap bones, bones larger than our house, bones of a dinosaur yet to be discovered that we’d name banopolis peelopolis so we could laugh when archeologists said it on the Discovery Channel. We...
The paper clips look like angels if you bend them a certain way. We wear them reverently or as reverently as seventh-grade girls can. Pinned to our collars, in remembrance of the popular boy who died: Our tiny office-supply seraphim. Maggie was...
In this future, my mistakes as a parent—the ones my friends told me not to beat myself up about—they make a difference. They’re the first divots of trauma in Melody’s soon-to-be-totaled-out soul. I can hold her attention for a few brief years with...
A new pair of underwear arrives in the mail on the 14th of every month. The subscription service delivers on their promise, and the hip-huggers, thongs, and French-cut briefs are as beautiful as they are comfortable. This month’s pair is very good....
I pick up stuff. Things others left behind. Scarves, mittens, dollar bills, pens, rings. And I cannot describe what it feels like to carry these things around. A month ago, in a crowded bus, I was standing behind a girl with a gym bag, and I...
Ma has a third thumb. It hangs from her pocket when she thinks no one’s looking, drags behind her as she bruises across the hardwood floor. When we were younger, meimei and I used to take turns unhooking it from her hand while she slept, then...
I get to relive one day. That’s all. For me, a crash ended everything, but the full range of trauma runs through our circle. Every form of loss. An assault stole one woman’s child. For another, it was a cult. Disease. Suicide. Accidents. Plain old...
Character and Expression class. Monday. A black box theater. The teacher clutches her cross pendant, “We must be looking above the characters. We must see things others can’t.” She paces the perimeter of the circle. “Come to class with a meaningful...
The town scalper says he lost his eyes at the supermarket. Left them on a shelf in the toothpaste aisle, and when he came back, they were gone. I say maybe he wasn’t looking hard enough, and neither of us laugh. My sister keeps a jar of two brown...
—finally, it is night and you wrench the bulb from the porch ceiling and all the moths plop to the floor and you traverse the rug of ripped wings and squashed thoraxes and the sounds of your boots pierce my chest but this time there is no blood and...
We bury Lil Fucker facing north in the frozen yard, halfway between the dogwood tree and the rusted tin shed, in the spot where he liked to shit. Daddy Lin tamps the dirt with the back of the shovel and hocks a pink gob onto the snow next to Lil...