by Chris Cottom As the motorcar crunches across the driveway of Tauntfield House, my sister, Edith, explains that the maids and our few remaining male servants are lined up on the left, with our parents at the door. She instructs me to take her arm, which I do as far…
by Nolo Segundo My wife and I went to say hello to her mother and put flowers on her grave and as it was such a vivid day shining like life’s most poignant dream (youknow, that feeling you only get in late autumn as the last reluctant leaves finally fall and old man winter sends hints of his coming harsh arrival), I suggested we go for a…
by Caitlyn Burry “How to Eat a Pomegranate’” placed first in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2025 Fall Fiction Contest. Red things stain quickly; remember to handle them with care. STEP 1: Select Your Fruit When selecting the perfect pomegranate, it’s best to feel the weight first. Hold the fruit in…
by Jacqueline Coleman “The Hope Index” placed second in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2025 Fall Fiction Contest. My manager says hospitals smell like hope— it’s better branding than what they actually smell like, which is dying children and hand sanitizer. They brief me in the van: our segment underperformed in…
by Jess Prosser “Home Base” placed third in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2025 Fall Fiction Contest. You live in a small two-bedroom house, that is more like a big shack with walls that make you feel like you’re in a storage space. You live on a military base in California…
by Andrea Lisowski “Stone Teeth” placed fourth in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2025 Fall Fiction Contest. Half a mile behind the Cathedral of St. Casimir, there’s a sad excuse for a waterfall. It’s three feet high and twenty feet long of stratified shale, iron gray, stream bed pitted like a…
by Ryan Fagan “The Replacement Shift” placed fifth in Southern New Hampshire University’s 2025 Fall Fiction Contest. I clock in at 6:02 p.m., and the scanner greets me like a metronome. Beep. Beep. Beep. The lights hum too bright for dusk, carts yawn, doors breathe us in and out. The…
by Charly Murmann Did I fall for you? I think I may have loved you. Maybe I did. Or maybe I loved the idea of falling in love with you. I fell in love with you. I loved your name: not common, chosen, and mysterious—Attic. I never asked you how…
by Rowan Tate I Suspect That Moths and Regret share a language no one translates. Grief has poor timing and excellent posture; I am learning to walk without finishing the sentence. I am not who I meant to become, but the bread still rises.
by Lucy Carr I dreamt of the red and yellow wool blanket that my wife, Evelyne, brought back from Morocco. She had purchased it in Tangier just before crossing the Straits of Gibraltar by ferry. I reached down to my calves to pull it across my body, my arms trembling…