The Last Missouri Aspens by Annie Sand

May 1, 2019

I glanced at the photograph: a teardrop shape, the size of my palm, its edges toothed with soft points curving up from stem to tip, a yellow aspen leaf. Bigtooth aspens are common in Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but not in Missouri, where differences in climate and soil hem their natural range. I’d been told that somewhere in Adair County, in a nature preserve called Big Creek, was the last stand of bigtooth aspen known to exist in the state. When I’d found out, I’d immediately called my mother.

“I’ve got your trees,” I told her.

You Don't Own Me by Joe Bonomo

December 1, 2018

Infamy is fine. Did you hear the news? John Bonham used a mud shark as a sex toy! Rod the Mod had to have his stomach pumped! Paul is Dead! But when a band gets too famous, literally too big for the room, I resist. My name’s Joe. I’m a fameist.

Balling by Jerald Walker

December 1, 2018

A private college in Boston was making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Along with being criticized for its lack of racial diversity, one of its black faculty had filed a discrimination lawsuit, and another had complained to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. A third had quit. It was rumored that the president, under whose watch these troubles festered, was being forced to resign. And so when I saw their ad for a professor of creative writing, with a specific appeal for applicants of color, I could not believe my good fortune. The college, it seemed to me, like a flowering boll of cotton beneath the hot Georgia sun, was ripe for the picking.

Unpredictable by Patrick Madden

December 1, 2018

Each sentence seems its own aphorism, a particle afloat humming in harmony with the others.

Chilean Wild Baby Pears by A. Kendra Greene

May 1, 2018

There is hardly a museum I visit where I don’t want to touch things.

A Genius Moment, Or an Accident by Joe Bonomo

May 1, 2018

Such attention to arrangement and production details became Merriman’s signature on the hundreds of compositions—not only jingles and commercials, but corporate musical events and theme-park-ride music—he produced over an impressive fifty-year career.

Northern Straits by Anne Trooper

April 1, 2018

The carpenters and fishermen come into Ralph’s for breakfast. They used to eye me up and down, but with a baby growing in my belly, I guess I’m not good for that anymore. I have on the brown, canvas, second-hand coat I found at the Trading Post. A man’s coat, but it fits pretty well, and I can’t see me in cute dresses with bows on the front, or tops that say baby on board.

Fellowship Application by Joseph Rios

December 1, 2017

His other hand enters my space with fingers out
like he’s flying or the birds are flying or we’re flying or the truck is
flying; we’re birds now and I still can’t get this shit lit.

On Exhibitionism by Joe Bonomo

December 1, 2017

The tiny flat at 102 Edith Grove in west Chelsea, London, is located in a district that was derided, centuries ago, as the “World’s End.” The name still seems apt: from the looks of things, I could push my fist through a water-damaged wall pretty easily, but I’m scared of what I might find living behind it.

Dislocation by Verity Sayles

December 1, 2017

I never told him I imagine spines like necklaces.

Home by Joe Bonomo

May 1, 2017

If there are an infinite number of ways to define home, there are also an infinite number of ways to return to it.

Hunting Larry Hunting Hank by Joe Bonomo

December 1, 2016

At the age of twenty-nine, Larry Brown started writing fiction in earnest. At the age of twenty-nine, Hank Williams drank himself to death.

What Real Men Do by Silas Hansen

December 1, 2016

He has heard people say this his whole life, even when he was a kid, even back when he was still trying, desperately trying, to be happy as a girl—and later, too, after he told people the truth of his gender (“Just trying to help,” they would say)—so he knows it must be true: He shouldn’t be afraid of anything.

Clara Aguilera's Holy Lungs by Molly Olguin

December 1, 2016

Clara died, as all the others did, at God’s hand. He sent an asteroid hurtling toward the world, and the world sent bombs to shoot it out of the sky, narrowly averting an age of ash and death. But of course God had the last word.

In Which I’m Skeptical Of Edward Hopper, who said “The Only Real Influence I’ve Ever Had Was Myself” by Joe Bonomo

May 1, 2016

The history created by my four brothers, my sister, and me is rich and, as in every family, paradoxically commonplace and unprecedented: I am Me in large part because of Them, a random generation of closely-related DNA gathering under the same roof.

Speed by Maria Kuznetsova

May 1, 2016

We were spying on my parents. This was something we started a few weeks ago, when I noticed that they were worth spying on.

This is by Christen Noel

May 1, 2016

There’s a wrong way to leave a husband. A bag with clothes for one night. Half a tank of gas. A man crying on the floor.

Here I Am by Xu Xi

May 1, 2016

He was not a zombie. Nor was he a ghoul, mummy, wraith, ambulatory skeleton, or operatic phantom. He wasn’t even 殭屍 (geong si), a dressed-to-the-nines Qing dynasty vampire that could at least do an approximation of the Lindy Hop, transcending time and culture into the Jazz Age. However, he was clearly dead, or undead, if you parsed language to its core.