Timber We grew tired of standing with no one reclining in our shade, climbing our trunks, or hanging swings or birdhouses from our limbs. What were we even

Bush Baby The man, fresh from the shower, is castigating the bush baby for ingesting yet again a large portion of the foot cream. He is upset not only because

The Subterfuge To disguise the fact that she is carrying the plans for the assassination of our town council, she decides to cross the open space between

Rumman Chowdhury, Timnit Gebru, Safiya Noble, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, and Joy Buolamwini open up about their artificial intelligence fears

Re: Helicopter I’ve been summarily informed that because I am not at an appropriate level in this organization, I do not merit a helicopter in my office.

Energy-hungry data centers and the use of unregulated AI are spiking electricity costs, guzzling water unsustainably, driving more fossil fuel pollution, and worsening the climate crisis. We need to ...

Peeling Mike Hutka, when he was home from selling on the road, never seemed to leave his house and yard. The car stayed in the driveway day and night. “He has

In no particular time, you were sitting idly and looking out the window, not really at anything, and you thought, in a complete and audible sentence, “I am

Somewhere along the line the cigarette that we were passing back and forth became my finger. My finger, passing through into your mouth quickly, leaving

Empty Plinths Daemon never believed the word diaphanous could apply to stone. Once he began carving souls from marble after he lost his wife at the age of

When my father starts bringing things over from the big Georgian house in Wynberg to my small cottage at Zeekoevlei I see trouble ahead. Logically, a one-room

The Pig Roast One of the guests, a stout, big-haired woman in a tight-fitting dress, asked the head of catering for the pig’s nose, which he gladly severed

Telecommunications III Last week Alexandra N. posted a selfie on X.com, the everything website from which much good cheer emerges. It was a good selfie. It

I prefer pickles to naked cucumbers. I prefer cats to kittens and kittens to children. I prefer to sit nearest the door, though not for the reasons you might

IRL VPN Patrick never fit in, so he fit out. Wherever he was, he was and was not. Touching down for holiday in Berlin, he started to feel divided, so he

You acquire a habit, then the habit is you. You are a person-sized container that the habit pours into. The habit fills to your edges. You are a transparent

The Homeless Knitter A creative woman was evicted from her small apartment for not paying rent. She’d once had a large bank balance until her husband’s health

I fold orange construction paper along the lines the teacher drew in Sharpie. My son beside me—six, gap-toothed, entirely absorbed—creases his own with

The dead have their own problems, unable to separate one day from another, calling out to someone who might remember them in another room, waving a phantom arm

New World Writing Quarterly invites submissions in the first fourteen days of January, April, July and October, and publishes in those same months. Submissions

Home from the Hospital I have a brand-new spine built from an Erector Set, the surgeon’s favorite tool kit. T10-S1, or S1-T10 depending on which direction you

Larry and I were ROTC cadets in high school in El Paso. When the mood took us, we would go plinking with our .22-caliber rifles in the desert north of the

So pay attention, will you? ~ The philodendron will live for some time after Daniel dies. Plants don’t think, survival their only concern. A yearning towards

I didn’t realize how sticky human blood was until I slipped in my kitchen last August and fell into the mouth of my pried-open dishwasher with a butter knife

Maisie Fails to Anticipate the Ordinary As her body began to break down, first one joint at a time—knees, hips, shoulders, then the discs in her spine, then

After They Ban Flowers We hold a women-only wake in the community hall, weeping for our snapdragons and hollyhocks, our alchemilla mollis and love-in-a-mist.

Breakfast I’m at my favorite breakfast place, Monday morning, hoping I can eat in peace, when I see Muldoon enter, just as I’d dreaded. I’ve already ordered,

No one forced me into silence No one forced me into silence. I practiced for it on my own, always confusing being tired for being done. In America, what

People in elevators are anxious. This is partly because people in elevators are going somewhere, and the elevators are not that somewhere. But it is also

The Oasis Borschewski tugs at the bedspread and pillows until they lie just so. Not that he gives a shit about pillows, really, or that Nina does. The street

from Fingerling Lakes Lab The Bio teacher’s stepped out for a cigarette when Fen recoils from the tarnished tray and says she won’t dissect the fetal pig This

I’m a decorative throw pillow, I’m a pair of memory foam house slippers After Eric Scot Tryon I work the afternoon shift at the TJ Maxx Homegoods. I eat yogurt

On the morning the last translator died, Meera began to understand things she had never been taught to hear. The ceiling fan spoke first. I have been tired for

Poor-people food is very in right now, Madam says, without a trace of self-consciousness. Just like jowar and bajra, she says. We rarely ate them before. But

The Edgewater Beach They called it the Jewel of Uptown. A slice of royal Monaco dropped on Lake Michigan’s humble shore. Pink stucco towers. Oak and marble

Swayed The horizon persists: an edge, a marker of distance. It’s either dusk or dawn. You choose. The light immanent. The shadows tipping outward, rotating.

Study eight flash fiction masters from Lydia Davis to Kathy Fish. Learn the craft principles behind the best very short stories and find your flash strategy.

What If Gravity Isn’t a Fundamental Force? A friend of mine wakes from a coma and for a second I get confused between the spelling of coma and comma.

My Birthday Card is a burly, three-legged bear wearing a polka party hat. GoldieBear and his Three Legs hope your birthday's just right! When it arrives four

Sure, I can help you with that. The top sights to see in Marrakesh are the Jemaa el-Fna, Koutobia Mosque, and the old city (Medina). Sure, I can help you with

Samuel Bucket’s wife, Beatrice, opened the door and snapped her fingers until I put the books on the table where Samuel sat with his substantial and fluttering

All the Christmas lights around town were coming down, stars and trees and the blinking yellow strings gone street by street and in the morning I was leaving.

Flyover Girl A wild onion in a red dress on the Blue Line, en route to a party where I wallflowered in place for three hours, while the whole room revolved

People will tell you that anniversaries are hard, as are the “firsts”—the first Christmas, the first concert, the first holiday. You can brace yourself for

The Flower Monger The local news informs me this morning that they found his lifeless body curled beneath a multi-colored blanket of flowers lying atop a