by Jason Grant The entire king-sized bed is mine now, but I can’t seem to move from the left side to the right because on the nights you were here—laying there—if I dared move from my side to yours in the middle of the night it was like I-was-crossing-some-boundary you-needed…
by Khristy L. Knudtson I spend five days of my seven educating teenagers pretending I’m not an emotional delinquent with the same “mommy issues” as the boy with the overgrown yellow hair in the back row with the newly minted scars. He radiates pain like a nuclear bomb everywhere he…
by Elaine Granados I am escaping into the hallway, letting #401’s door thud behind, closing on heavy heat open windows could never lift and the constant smell of black beans cooking, on sirens and horns of Koreatown (before Starbucks and Target on the corner), on the buzzing in my head,…
by Janna Brooke Wallack The tiny genie flew up from the bottom of the cereal box and hovered over the table, eye-level with the cop. “You’re a thinker, Sal. I dig that,” he said, his little wings fluttering. “But you’ve got fifteen minutes, bro.” Sal could wish homes for the…
by Jeffery Williams Somewhere in the distance, there resonates familiar THUMP BUMP noises of clumsy little feet. In a bedroom, down a hall, in the kitchen, down the stairs, above my head, in my head, somewhere there is enthusiasm and mischief stirring. Here at the very bottom floor, surrounded by…
by Taylor Banuchie It’s time. I’m prostrate before a glowing figure, so spectacularly bright that my eyes combust, merely ashes now in my fire-pit sockets. I reach out in supplication, and Ascendance reaches back. Our fingertips touch, and we disappear into each other. I don’t miss my eyes because I…
by Cynthia Roby Boomerang was Sadie’s man, and he got his name by definition: Every time she threw the lying cheater out, she’d cry, howl, and moan, all before that need-to-satisfy ache in her groin pried her thighs apart and let her Boomer back in—until the dag-gone fool never returned….
by Sarah Leslie We were the only two who could ever get into your head. Jack convinced you I manipulated you. But all he ever did was flush away reason and stir up a rage. It was never easy to pick between the two of us. You and Jack went…