fiction that lingers long after the flash
flash
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...
Matryoshka
She is the biggest of the girls, freshly turned, the musky sweetness of larch still lingering. Pleasant smile, rosy cheeks. Her eyes are painted open, though there isn't much to see inside the truck. But in the dim her imagination flies. There are others with her here...
Again
One of the first times I was born was during the plague. Miracle of miracles, I survived! But Maman died, and my sisters, then Papa, and our man Bertran. Finally, I had to go, too. There was no one left to feed me, and the rats frightened me to death. * I awoke in the...
Something in the Water
When all three of the neighbor girls became pregnant at the same time, my mother gave me a stern look and said, “There’s something in the water, Mabel.” I only guessed from her tone and from what my teacher called “context clues” what she meant. Because it seemed that...
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
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,...
Dead Mother Card
Amanda receives her Dead Mother Card when she’s nine and uses it to stay home for two weeks and eat nothing but spaghetti. At eleven, she uses it to end her father’s new relationship, at fifteen, plays it to bump a B+ to an A-, at seventeen, uses it to buy alcohol,...
Tiny God
One morning, our little son declared himself God. We laughed and prayed to him at breakfast, thanking him for our meal. He blessed the strawberries, and when we ate them, we became the man, the girl who had picked them, and we knew how they had lived, we felt their...
Simulcast
Our family loves television. We watch like it’s our job. Every moment not spent sleeping is for viewing. We watch first thing in the morning, mining sleep pebbles from our eyes. We watch at the breakfast table, spooning soggy Cheerios into our mouths. On the school...