For thirty-one of their thirty-two years together, Lydia and Meredith shared an evolving dumb joke which started one day in 1992 when Lydia came home from a rehearsal with a rash on her neck and claimed that she had Tennis Elbow. They would deliver increasingly...
When the war comes, I do not hear it. There are no planes overhead; It is civil, I am later told. I run through dry grass with other yard children, past creaking play structures, storm-gray walls, and an empty gas silo rusting in the arid field. I fall, clutching my...
46 stories on our Longlist! We're working on selecting our shortlist now, and soon we'll announce those titles and get the stories off to judge Natalie Lima! The Winter Flute Leucosia’s Last Song Surfacing Wild Bill's Last Ride A Visit from Baba Roga The Money Pin...
We're excited to name the winner and the runners-up! We'll publish all three micros in June! Winner! Grilled Cheese by Addison Hoggard Runners-up: A letter from the thrice-widowed, late Elsbeth Sorrow to the daughter she grew in the garden by Vic Nogay The Baby Born...
If she'd been a regular girl like Janey, painting her nails whisper pink and talking with an affectation on the phone. Or an awkward girl like Amy, tending to elderly parents, holding down a job at the IGA while keeping straight A's. Or a weirdo like Naomi, even,...
Her name was on the Literature of Mathematics & Economics conference roster, attendee badge plucked from the folding table by the time I arrived. The absence of a nametag confirmed her physical presence, hovering nearby. I wasn't playing that game again. Ancient...
Sarah Freligh’s new collection, A Brief Natural History of Women, will be released in June by Harbor Editions. These flash and micro stories explore the rust-shot reality of women and girls perpetually trapped in a harsh place and time. Each story—each sentence—is...
Monday I am reading to Emmeline a story about a man who had no DNA. He had severe radiation damage to his internal organs, this man, a nuclear power plant technician. His immune system was gone, the story says. His DNA couldn’t rebuild itself. With blood in his tears,...
From this top ten, editor Tommy Dean will choose a winner! Branded by Peter Bruno Lemons by Kristin Chemis Burnt Offerings by Mary Francis Grilled Cheese by Addison Hoggard Demon at Noon by J A Knight A letter from the thrice-widowed, late Elsbeth Sorrow to the...
You can probably imagine a husband-not-baby say he’s hungry, and the woman-his-wife Sienna hurry and scurry, her hands and fingers and wrists getting busy with kneads and whisks, mammaries leaking, while the baby-from-him sleeps, because Sienna must be efficient...
My husband owns a German bisque doll from the late 1800s. Her name is Clarisa. She has delicate blonde curls that frame her porcelain face and glass blue eyes, both of which my husband polishes every morning with baby wipes gripped in shaking hands. Clarisa came with...
Her head was found perpendicular to the lake. The sight almost eventuated a myocardial infarction, that’s a heart attack to you and me. An elderly man walking his dog or being walked by him made the grim discovery. She had always been the bird refusing to fly in...