By Belle Waring / Fiction /         “Learn to obey, you who are but dust! Learn to humble yourself, you who are but earth and clay!” —Thomas à Kempis It wasn’t like we kept people prisoner. You could just walk off down the driveway if you wanted, two lines of dark grayish brown curving into dusk, with the huge oaks over it, and the hummock between. We would pla y that was f airy hills with the green moss, and the little things like fir trees, and slender, tiny orange mushroo

By Weiji Wang 王唯冀 / Poetry /         Sophie had a daughter, who died an infant. She lived—how could she not—and gave another birth. A son. The son grew out of infancy. He lived. Sophia thought her daughter should live: how could she not / think how could she not / live how could the son / go on to live and live / the way men would live how could he not / live the way she / herself lived / the way her daughter / was supposed to live if he was going to She put him in a dress an

By Zainab Omaki / Nonfiction /         Technically, I did meet you. I have a picture of you holding me as a baby at some sort of party. You are in a bright orange skirt suit, bathed in the glitter of lights under a sky of darkness. Your hair is a gloriously coiffed jheri curl, your long legs tucked under you on a pool chair, the water in mid-ripple beside you. And your lips, your ostentatiously purple lips, your stunningly purple lips, are spread out in a smile that knows no

By Ann Calandro / Nonfiction /         In July and August we stayed with my mother’s parents in their white summer house with green shutters, fifty miles west of the city. The house had four small bedrooms, one bathroom, five acres of weedy grass, and a large kitchen in which my grandmother Evelyn baked bread and pies, made jam, and canned fruit. Outside smelled like lilacs, planted by a previous owner. Inside smelled like burning sugar. The summer I was nine, my father wen

By Catherine Niolet / Fiction /         Daffodils bloomed early in our backyard that year. My son and I noticed them in our morning wanderings: he, gripping a borrowed basketball squarely between two banana-slick palms, elbows wet with oatmeal and whole milk, and I, wearing a too-large coat and beginning to sweat.  At first it was only the shoots that were visible, and we watched them each day as the stalks emerged and later unfolded. We plucked them when they were beginning

By Kory Wells / Flash /         At 12– One of my mother’s best friends—she has two, both named Nancy, and in this memory they blend together—picks me up after school. From the teacher’s parking lot. Usually I catch the bus. “Your mother’s doing okay,” she says. “It was benign.” Which means not malignant, I think. These words are only weeks old to me, and I have trouble remembering which is good and which is bad. It will be decades before I know they aren’t pure opposites. My

By Kathy Jiang / Poetry /         光輝歲月 after Beyond The morning Wong Kai Kui died,  my father read the newspaper, phoned my mother from...

By Emily Hall / Flash /         The boys start in opposite ends of the woods behind their father’s house. Maybe they start by hiding,...

By Richard Zboray / Flash /         The eclipse of the sun started on April 8 th  in Burlington, Vermont at 2:14, went total when...

By Patricia McGuire-Hughes / Nonfiction / *for Grandma Mac   A month after Grandma died, her voice visited me for the...

By Kristel Chua / Fiction /   In the rearview mirror, Yakima valley resembled a bowl of milk. Clouds swirled in ominous slow-motion,...

By Cindy Sams / Nonfiction /   There must have been so much blood. On the floor, on the counter, on nineteen-year-old Patricia...

By Robin Greene / Poetry /   Driving our ‘55 Chevy, my mom sings Sinatra while I sit beside to her, peering at Cunningham Park   as...

* A stone or wooden seal to sign one's name, used in Korea since the 2nd century B.C. By Nik Chang Hoon 임창훈 / Poetry /

By Cortney Esco / Poetry /   We’re out of eggs, and while I've got you, I'm sorry about that time I made you cry in the kitchen....

By Iris Harris / Flash /   Terrance stands in front of the mirror, averting his eye from the disdainful reflection of four decades. Long,...

By Alana Craib / Flash /   My mother eats her own hair for breakfast. With milk and salt and fresh fruits. In a little ceramic bowl...

By Ber Anena / Third Place, 2024 Plentitudes Prize in Fiction / The boda boda man carrying Owino pulled right up to the main entrance of...

By Carolyn Mikulencak / Fiction / I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters. To you they have shown some truth. When shall we meet...

By Tristan Joseph Espinoza / Poetry / Dallas is boring these days, the endless suburban outlook, that stuck look on her face, I just keep...

By Mark Martin / Fiction / The four of them—two adults and two children—languished in a parked car held immobile by the rain. The weather...