Ariel by Jinwoo Chong
At nine years old you pin him to the soil, knees around ribs, center your two fingers together between his eyes and shout bang, bang, you’re dead, you’re fucking dead. He is writhing, trying to escape you; your sounds…
Tag: Present Tense
How to Return Your Child to School by Hillary Smith
He’ll want the Moana one with zippers like cresting waves and straps that glisten blue plastic glitz. He’ll cry that Michelle Naylor’s mom let her buy that one in purple. You’ve only met Michelle Naylor’s mom once, at family…
Pig Son by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Since my ex-wife and I buried our son, I have committed myself wholeheartedly to my lab, growing hearts and other organs inside of pigs that could have saved Peter. It’s his birthday today, which means Laura texts me more…
Help Us See Your Face by Susan Kleinman
Chesed shel emet they call it—the truest loving-kindness, preparing a body for burial. Truest, because it is done at inconvenient times, in harshly lit rooms. Truest, because touching dead people isn’t fun. Truest, because the kindness can never be…
2.25.64 by Mark Farrington
Into the arena comes the somber and menacing figure of Charles “Sonny” Liston, aptly named the most frightening man in the world. People said the war changed your father but your mother disagreed. “It just gave him license,”…
The Solution Woman by Kenan Orhan
Gökçe watches her younger brother stride up the street to her flower shop in his only suit coat, carrying a borrowed briefcase. The coat does not have holes yet, but the hem of the sleeve has come undone, and…
“The Color of Water” by Joshua Jones
i. The ocean below is a slab of stone, stretching endlessly beyond the tips of the plane’s wings. Only dabs of cloud interrupt it, and Rishi is bored. His mother’s phone won’t come on. It’s still too hot. It always…
“The Rabbi’s Wife” by Robin Black
How many funerals over the years? She couldn’t say. The rabbi’s wife loses count. People have no idea how constant death is. They think it’s an event. It’s not. It’s life. The rabbi’s wife knows—because she is the one whose…
“The Renaissance Person Tournament” by Clare Beams
The tournament is the highlight of our year at the Simmler School, figuratively and literally: Abe Larson, math teacher and advisor to the tech club, uses acid-bright bulbs in the auditorium spotlights. He likes to make the contestants sweat. Abe…
“Tidings of the Apocalypse” by Patrick Ryan
You try not to get caught up in the prophesies of this world because they all stem from the idea that one omniscient God has decided to destroy what he’s created, while the more interesting prophecies come from other worlds…
