On Sewing and the Anatomy of Lips Cupid's bow: The contour line of the upper vermilion. I am drawn tight, nocked with pretty words and flattering susurrations, pulled close like the fletch of a hapless arrow trembling in that heartbeat of before—then released, flung...
Mom was pushing 80 past a semi on the wrong side of Madison, and it was one of them numbers with the cows in it, and you could see the faces peering out through the slats. She must have caught them on the periphery, or maybe she got a glimpse of me in the mirror, and...
She calls herself Rat Girl, but she looks like a little Swiss doll. Now in the Chapel, she is singing round-eyed over our heads and serpentine-ing her head in the shape of infinity as she always does. Her arms are sinewy, pounding at her guitar; bracketing small...
Like a toddler lost in a laundry basket full of dirty towels, the Argentine music dances. Cuts through the candlelit fog by the lake. Hip-checks the couple swinging in the hammockfrom making out—still in their bathing suits from earlier that afternoon.They fall. The...
Here’s something I want to confess: I’ve stopped trying. A curvier-beaked whale dies with a lump of plastic in its belly. Evidence of the levels of marine pollution. I want to write about it. Writing about a subject that rattles me, simultaneously about a field of...
1. She collects seashells, three in a row. One domed, a Buddhist stupa; another hugs the ground, an earthworm after spring rain, seeking damp earth to nuzzle. The third is halved, amputated, an orange tongue searching a mate. A shell on land is life made nomad,...
The Marys—mothers, daughters, whores, saints, queens and killers—meet every Thursday afternoon in Riverside Park during the spring and summer months. In inclement weather they go to the New York Public Library on 67th Street, between the firehouse and Lincoln Center,...
The rookery is disguised as a shed. I keep a lawnmower and a pair of hedge trimmers for the sake of camouflage, stowed beneath nesting shelves. The nests are woven of straw, pet hair, and twigs pulled from local woodlands. Fifteen ravens, oil black. A single...
For breakfast, Zip and I will eat a rancid jar of olives, a brittle feather from the windowsill, and a single dehydrated fig. Good pickings, rich pickings, delicacies. We will start light, first the olives, then the feather, and finally the fig which has been confined...
Huge thank you to judge Matthew Salesses for reading and choosing the winners. This was definitely one of our most competitive contests and we expect these shortlisted stories will find excellent homes very soon! 1st Place: “mi corazón quiere cantar así” by jj...
The ghosts have come looking for my maid, but the maid is not here. The maid is out back in the alley with crusts of bread and apricot pits and chicken bones. The maid looked hard at me when I put her outside. Her eyes black and round as new moons. My whole body...
Blonde girls at school seek to become blonder. Blonde girls arrive with new highlights, preening at the way their faces are framed by golden honey. Blonde girls say, “I put sun in,” and blonde girls ooh and ahh. Blonde girls coo and comfort when the results are less...