Everyone in the village is born without hands; the children get along just fine with elbows and teeth and toes. Sally likes holding her paintbrush in her mouth, because it lets her get right up close to the canvas and add in tiny details like fingernails and leaf-veins and dress-threads. When her friends are particularly … Continue reading In The Beginning, All Our Hands Are Cold by Ephiny Gale
My mother has summoned me back to her home. Her home is a dilapidated shack set back amongst the cattails in a remnant marsh. The marsh is preserved wetland in the affluent community of Darien. My mother is not affluent. She believes she should be affluent, and this is why she struggles to maintain her … Continue reading Mother Imago by Henry Stanton
For many years, saying “No” hadn’t occurred to me. “No? What do you mean, no?” Red-faced, finger pointing, she straightened her back. “I demand . . . demand you make love to me.” “I no longer feel the same way,” I told her. And it was true. I’d watched her grow bitter with age, … Continue reading When We Sleep We Kill The World by Adam Lock
The fingers welcome you first. No, not fingers, despite their grip. Twigs. Green, if you snap them. Still alive. You don’t feel that way, almost to the door. How many times have you dreamed of not going back? Of saws and the echo of an empty field? The twigs tousle your hair. You hate it. … Continue reading Milk Teeth and Heartwood by Kathryn McMahon
These are the elements of the plague: (1) POINT OF ORIGIN Nothing comes from nothing; this is the cornerstone of all truth. The plague of Thucydides comes from Ethiopia; that of Procopius from Egypt; that of Boccaccio is sea-swept from the dawn toward the setting sun. Virgil’s descends from a diseased sky. Is it the … Continue reading The Elements of the Plague by Julia August
They say if you spot the shape of a dragon in the clouds, you’ve witnessed one being born. That’s where it all starts—high, high away. Dad used to tell me stories about dragons. Stories about why they hurt people and where they go when they disappear. Sad stories, I always thought, despite the sweet smell … Continue reading High, High Away by Hamilton Perez
Uncle Walt was never the same after his brain operation, and the new magical kingdoms he spun made children everywhere cry hot tears. Children everywhere cried “Shouldn’t there be a palace, Uncle Walt? What is that horrid black building with the barbed wire?” Children, that was the Palace. A stark black box. Fluorescent glare spilled … Continue reading Tale Without Fairies by Matthew F. Amati
We fell the trees. The heart-leaves grow proud here, despite the cold earth and beating rains that should keep them humble. They rend the skies, and so we tear their thick trunks with the axes the stone shapers bring us each day. They fall and we move on, always north, while the elders dig up … Continue reading The Spinnings by Rob Francis