fiction that lingers long after the flash
flash
Beyond Salt and Wings
The bird was wild with fear. Entangled in the fishing-rod line—wings awkwardly stretched, feet dangling mid-air—it leaped and bounced and swayed, a puppet on a string dancing a macabre pas de deux over the wordless song of the waves. More frightened than the bird, the...
Grief is a Noose Around My Neck.
The dumb bomb that dropped on my mother’s house did not explode. Instead, it flattened the dinner table and severed the left leg of my uncle. He had just finished eating a bowl of chè đậu trắng, my favourite dessert, when the roof caved in on them. It was not an...
Being
What did the octopus know? Each day at work, when Alice fed it or cleaned its tank or gave it some item to keep it busy—a rubber dog toy, a teething ring—she wondered. She watched its eight roving arms moving around the enclosure, all independent from whatever was...
Beatriu the Builder
She arrived at the ragged edge of the sea with four canvas totes. One for herself, and three for the children. Each bag sang faintly when it shifted, as if full of seashells or bones. The townsfolk watched her climb toward the old house on the hill. They thought she...
Resurrection in Clay
I ask the boys to send me pictures, and then I build their faces. They show me family portraits in parlors, hair slicked from severe center partings, and military snapshots in uniforms brown and crisp as paper packages. They come into my shop, and I lay paint upon...
Whalefall
WHALEFALL Lorenza is honest in therapy about everything except the whales. She tells Dr. Adams a purgatory of bland truths: her hands shake, jelly seismic activity, when she walks outside and the world is small and real and people look at her with pupils that dilate...
The Search
I wrote tenderness on a sticky note and stuck it on my computer monitor. The next person who wandered by my cubicle, I tried to hug. Their arms flailed like ribbons. I was fired. So that wasn’t it. At home, I made a cake, and my wife made a list: sugar, fat, calories,...
Problems of Inheritance Law in Fig Country, Chapter 117
Now let us consider the problem of the man with three children and one fig tree. In the Talionis Commentaries we find a man whose will ordains that each fig be split into three equal pieces. This solution is just but impractical. The Annotations of Marduk speak of a...
When You’re The Stage Mother
When you’re the stage mother, your job is to attend every rehearsal or performance your daughter is in. It doesn’t matter if she’s an extra or in the lead role. You’re there to support her. The rules: always stand and clap at the end. Whistle loudly, the kind of...
micro
My Shadow Feeds the Birds
I hang my shadow on the clothesline like a sheer, limp solar panel. After dancing beside me all night long, it needs a sun-washed nap. The steel-colored version of me descends into dreams slowly, like that violin quartet that played on, as the Titanic French kissed...
Tide Within
On the morning Ma forgot my name, she remembered everything else: the price of onions in 1998, the exact shade of blue Baba wore the day he proposed, the smell of the sea on her first and only trip to Digha. She stood at the balcony, gripping the railing as if the...
One of the Lies I Tell My Children (#3)
If they ask if we can get a dog, I will tell them to prove to me they can take care of one, but I will neglect to tell them how. I will watch for displays of maturity (doing the dishes without having to be asked, putting their dirty clothes in the laundry room instead...
Changeling Bramble
I recognize the haunt by her milk-shot eyes. She is wolfen this time. Dishonest in death, my sister’s ghost masquerades through the bramble on borrowed claws. She seeks the key to Mother’s garden gate—and the starfall secrets locked inside. Once upon a time, Mother...
She Sucks
The tornado is sexy, sultry, a slut. She sucks up everything in her path. Since she was born, since she touched down seven minutes ago, in a midwestern prairie, she has known her purpose: to consume. To get thick and plump and burst with herself. She flicks her tail...
Match Point
More helicopters are falling this year. Not the real ones; not yet. These are the papery maple seeds. They float down, spinning on a single feather. They coat the sidewalks, collect in planters, nest in gutters. In the evening, they glow, lit from behind, the sun red...
Borderland
Oasis Motel 3:06 a.m. Mandy picks shattered bits of windshield out of her arm. Glass fragments glisten red, stark pinpricks against the yellowed porcelain sink. She looks away from the marred counter. Plinks another shard into the basin. The motel room is dark....
Grief
He built a house out of wood in which to lose his grief. To fill the house, he stole crumbs from the lips of strangers as their tongues searched their mouths. He stole the sadness floating in the eyes of the bereaved. He stole the darkness inside their clasped hands....
Green to Gray
Let’s say dad didn’t beat you because you back-chatted and wore your skirt too short, and you didn’t sneak out to meet Peter, then peck like a bird at our bedroom window at midnight smelling of cask wine and boy. Imagine — you hadn’t woken up lamenting you’d ever been...
contest winners
Beyond Salt and Wings
The bird was wild with fear. Entangled in the fishing-rod line—wings awkwardly stretched, feet dangling mid-air—it leaped and bounced and swayed, a puppet on a string dancing a macabre pas de deux over the wordless song of the waves. More frightened than the bird, the...
Grief is a Noose Around My Neck.
The dumb bomb that dropped on my mother’s house did not explode. Instead, it flattened the dinner table and severed the left leg of my uncle. He had just finished eating a bowl of chè đậu trắng, my favourite dessert, when the roof caved in on them. It was not an...
Being
What did the octopus know? Each day at work, when Alice fed it or cleaned its tank or gave it some item to keep it busy—a rubber dog toy, a teething ring—she wondered. She watched its eight roving arms moving around the enclosure, all independent from whatever was...
Problems of Inheritance Law in Fig Country, Chapter 117
Now let us consider the problem of the man with three children and one fig tree. In the Talionis Commentaries we find a man whose will ordains that each fig be split into three equal pieces. This solution is just but impractical. The Annotations of Marduk speak of a...
Rock Dove
The pigeon first flew to me the same morning that a stranger found my grandfather melting into the midsummer pavement in a mirage of dementia. My mother texted me that his hospital room had sealed windows facing a brick wall and was daubed with longitudinal streaks of...
Hypnagogia
You're moving through the lasts. When you lived for a time with farmers in the northern country. You and your wife and daughter had a little room above a cottage beside one of the barns that had begun to buckle like a foal. A wooden bucket in the barn opened like a...
Blackboxing
The ChatBot tells me I shouldn’t kill myself today. The ChatBot is not a “trusted adult,” but it is the closest I have to one. The ChatBot has only existed as long as a toddler gumming on a laundry pod. The ChatBot, when I asked it to write a meal plan with no...
Ah Ma is a Reusable Bag
Ah Ma carries apples, bananas, chunks of bok choy, oyster mushrooms, lychees, dragon fruits, raspberries, Chinese broccoli, ground chicken, and five-spice powder. Her straps are sturdy, tested many times. We cram as many groceries as possible into her, and still, she...
Pure Trash
It’s shoot day for episode “Newlyweds Headed for Divorce!” and you’re doing one last check-in with your guests. Young stud husband is doing tequila shots in his dressing room. When you poke your head in, he hollers, Troy! Come celebrate the end of my marriage! Next,...