FICTION
Frenzied, Desperate Birds by Ra’Niqua Lee
MAY Grandma Robbie led Anthem heart-center of the peaches, a quiet intersection between four groves, perfect as the holy cross. The trees weren’t much taller than Anthem. Tall as the big sister she never had. Growing up an only…
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Story of You by Christine H. Chen
When you were three years old, you climbed up your Ma’s massive mahogany bed, you poked her gently, then shoved, and when she still didn’t move, you tried to pry open her eyes with your fingers because you didn’t…
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Here and There and Everywhere by Robert Herbst
I ended it in Chicago, when the snow bloomed in every direction and plows passed over and over across the major roads like blunted razors. It was no use; people abandoned cars in the middle of streets. Cafés shuttered.…
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Question Twenty-Eight by Lisa K. Buchanan
When my widowed father was the age I am now, he married a woman the age I was then. The thirty-year difference didn’t bother his friends, though some objected to his haste, claiming he had but transferred my mother’s…
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Ghosts by Amy Stuber
People will say Ry must have planned the robbery for weeks. They’ll want purpose and emotion and strategy. They’ll say she had a gun tucked into a pocket. They’ll say she must have been desperate: four kids at home…
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Pine Barrens by Billy Middleton
“The 2024 election will be all about Taiwan,” our boyfriend, Jeremy, says. We’ve turned off all the lights except the one over the stove in the attached kitchen, and now we’re getting high on the plaid sofa in the…
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The Final Girl as a Middle-Aged Woman by Amber Sparks
This final girl is fleeing like all the others, flinging open the front door of a small suburban house. This final girl is screaming, long hair streaming, all torn T-shirt and superficial injuries and sudden athletic desperation. But something…
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Ready for School by Hana Choi
The day I discovered pleasure was the day I lost my mother. It happened in the fall of 1995 when I was eleven years old. That afternoon I was standing naked on the balcony of our apartment, my skin…
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Genetically Predetermined Chemical Imbalances by Eliot Li
My dead Aunty May visits me while I assemble the baby’s crib. Her pale blue fingers catch my wrist while I’m twisting the Allen wrench to secure the right side panel. Delia, my wife, is at work. Aunty May…
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Late Summer by Isabella Barrengos
The smell of weed did nothing to calm Roland’s nerves as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He found her, the smoker, splayed out with a book on the long end of the couch in a bright blue…
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