At night, we search for the darkness. We stumble around inside of ourselves. Someone says they can still see the fireflies, and I think, perhaps, I can still see my lover—pale pink lips.We cannot make...

I noticed it first on Monday morning, wide awake at 4 a.m., right there in black and white on my phone app. 25 Across: Avian metaphor for a romantic couple (9 letters); 30 Across: Two of a kind (4 let...

Deftly switching between past and present, the seven stories in Lisa Thornton’s We’ll Be Birds have as much to do with memory as anything. In “All God’s Creatures,” an older man loses track of t...

Boyfailure

by Mitchell Ny...We lie on the switchback, you atop my chest, and become immovable—like my nerves had been pulled gently from my navel. I am denervated meat and cooked clay.

Fabric does what it’s told if you’re patient, my mother says. She irons sitting down, in the corner of the living room with her back to the garden. She holds up the tumble-dried garment…

Cocksucker After Sylvia Plath Old stories from southern American landscapes tell the tale of men who chase the tails of young farmer boys in their Sunday best.

By Elena Zhang My brother lives inside of my ear. In the morning, I set him down on the kitchen table. He gives me a bow, then disappears down the sink drain. I never know what he does during the d…

Ra'Niqua LeeI cut bubble wrap in a windowless factory. This is machine work, for metal levers. Human work is me feeding plastic to boxes.

And on the afternoon it rained, we crowded into the craft cabin to weave shallow baskets for our grief—only seven days, and one of them wet. Funk of beach towels sour to the stitches, hot blacktop steaming...

this house moving like a slick fox all the purples mourning Continue reading…

Shortlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Annual Writing Competition by Emily Rinkema First, if it’s not your favorite baby, consider just letting it go. If it is your favorite, then try to negotiate. Offer the...

Haircuts after “Beneath the Layers” (below) ~ Kurt Reynolds Lined up, wiped clean, eldest to the baby, sons are screwed to a gilded frame. Ferrules are paint-caked, brushing scenes of h…