Mother first told me the myth of the rabbit on the moon when I was still small enough to listen. How when the moon goddess, dressed in rags, begged the rabbit for food, it twitched, then threw its body into the fire at her feet. The goddess, grateful, drew the...
My parents buy my eyes and hair. The auctioneer’s small, doting assistant brings the parts over. My mother sniffs the hair and my father holds my bottled eyes close to his own. They had thirty years with me, but can any number ever be enough? A few tears fall. The...
When the boy’s mother told him to at last get dressed for the pool party, what he heard was: son, revel in yourself because everything in this life is permissible. Beyond the pool, he found the boys gathered around the air conditioner’s metal cage, handing each other...
For all that she wants, Janie knows Mr. Neilson will never kiss her. He conducts. When he conducts, his hair whips, his arms fly through the air. His moustache glistens. There are dark rings in his pits. Janie wants to be the kind of person whose devotion yields dark...
Find a pool of water. It should be still. Maybe in a hidden grove somewhere. Remember a person or thing is always itself and not something else. Now think about a glass. A flat piece of glass. Consider mercury, a type of silvering. Certain things do not have a...
Marisol goes dancing on Fridays. She leaves at dusk, smelling of kiwi and tree branches, walking much taller in her black strappy pumps. She won’t come home until her heels blister. Later, she’ll say––These are my battle wounds, miren––as she shows us all that’s...
During the day I paint numbers on watch dials so they shine luminescent, but when the factory bell rings, I paint myself for you. My teeth, my eyelids, my nails. The circle of my drugstore compact reflects the glowing pieces of me, the mirror a door I could slip...
She wakes to a white-bellied blur, a frantic smudge of a bird looping the motel room. It jerks sideways like something hunting or hunted, bounces off the window and scrabbles at the mirror. Its wings pop so loudly, the sound ricocheting off the pressboard walls, that...
The guide led the small group of tourists through the grand foyer of the Powell Hall plantation house. Madison shambled far behind the others, eight months pregnant and exhausted by the Georgia heat. As she and Justin stood in the parlor listening to the...
Do not let your children stand in the shopping cart. Do not let them ride in the bottom of the cart, where pigtails or small hands could get trapped in the filthy wheels. And never — never — leave them unattended in the store. You will linger while looking for the...
Here is the shortlist of 20 micros we couldn't stop discussing! We're excited to have sent these stories to judge Deb Olin Unferth! Results in 4 weeks! Runaway Dad Never Gave Me a Rabbit's Foot Fifteen Shades of Pink To Play the Blues I Come From Aliens A woman makes...
1. I jump on my bicycle and keep my head straight when I see the girls a grade ahead of me who have boyfriends at sixteen—like that’s gonna last. They wave. I don’t. I’m heading to Pumpkin Circle to see what’s selling, last week it was crayfish and false hope. I’ll...