There Will Be No Lace by TM Upchurch Your lips bubble and slurp, a sweet shik-shik suckle of air as I curl around you, smelling your butterscotch breath. You pause to gape a greedy smile, swallowing the night; you are…
Blood Orange
Blood Orange by Sherri Turner I spat out my mouthful, the remainder of the segment glistening red-flecked between my fingers. Ruby juice splashed on the stone floor. “It’s got blood in it,” I said. “It’s not real blood,” my mother…
Declaration
Declaration by Madeline Anthes My husband is gone. The other women cry for their missing men. I see them in town, their babies swaddled against their chests. Their eyes are red and swollen. They are the picture of grief. Loneliness.…
Thrice Around the Walls of Troy
Thrice Around the Walls of Troy by Gary Duncan Round and round, thinking: All this, for her? Remembering the stories he’d heard about her: the face, the ships, all that. That first time he saw her, his idiot brother…
Postbellum
Postbellum by Fiona J. Mackintosh January 25, 1867 Somewhere outside Jacksonville, Illinois, the train slows to a crawl. Clara cups her hands and peers into the darkness but sees only the rail bed stones and the ragged edge of a…
You May Hear of a Killing
You May Hear of a Killing by Becca Borawski Jenkins The heat made her an inch shorter as she watched the dust devil tread toward her down the only road in this not-even-a town. Her hands rested at her hips.…
Send Him Victorious
Send Him Victorious by Jude Higgins I last saw my big brother Charlie laugh in 1937, the day after George VI’s coronation. He nearly wet himself when I asked him about a word in the National Anthem. Why were we…
Two by Two
Two by Two by KM Elkes They say Noah died, 350 years on from the Great Flood, as a naked, purple-lipped drunk. But some know better. The ones who have seen ancient eyes beneath brows knotted as old, sick trees.…
The Bathtub
The Bathtub by Amy Slack Tommy never came home clean. He finished each shift a little heavier than he started it, what with all the soot that would settle on his sweat-soaked skin as he worked. I’d have his bath…
Professor Lazzo’s Stupendous Flea Circus
Professor Lazzo’s Stupendous Flea Circus by Jennifer Falkner The professor rolls up his sleeve. It’s flecked here and there with gravy, with mud, possibly with blood, difficult to tell against the coarse weave and the ancient stains. He lowers his…