by Sumitra Singam

“Seema and I sit with our backs to opposite walls. As far apart as we can be in this tiny, circular space. She gets the benefit of the breeze from the open doorway – they fan her ankles that have become thick with her swollen sense of status.”

by Steve Gerson

“Something is truly amiss, Johann.  I sense an apparition, a spectral augury, a dark wraith . . . eavesdropping.”

by Amir Szuster

“It all began mango-yellow. The way he peeled me, chewed me, satisfied himself with me. All night together, an intense and vibrant flavor. We could spend hours without growing tired, like a child climbing a mango tree before lunch.”

by Faith Murri

“I am grateful for my doppelgänger, who sits in my chair and stares out of my eyes, because she keeps the secret of me so well.”

by Seth Parker

“His fingerprints, already stained in ink when his body was found, identified him as one Matthias Krüger, while dental records list him as Juma Mwinyi. His neighbors knew him as Tahonetsakon Deerfoot.”

by Christie Chapman

“Every morning you go to the potions…They work if you believe in them. And you do. You have to..”

by Clare Martin

“I serve the soup and together we eat the pain, the wasted years, the anger, and the loss.”

by Vivian Littlefield

“Can you separate her from herself and does it part for you like the sea for Moses? Is it exciting?”

by Megan Chunn

“…the plump, fig-like lower lip, partially bitten by her incisors, then parts. Ready to be plucked and consumed.”

by Brooks Egerton

“Once the interment is complete, she presses her forehead to the wet ground, inhales the sweet dark churning work of earthworms, squeezes her eyes shut, pictures her mother’s gap-toothed boyfriend and the drawer where the spoon belongs and the butcher knife that also lives there.”

by Nolan Knight

“And you emerged? Someplace else. Not L.A.? No. Where? Dunno—magnolias sprouting gumdrops, a sherbet sky—pterodactyls overhead.”

by Erik Peters

“Inflatable rubber, whose electric colours betray their unnatural production and remind me that they will live on in landfills for millennia.”

by Ben Arzate

“The interviewee goes to the nearby window. He jumps out. He falls twenty floors and dies on impact with the sidewalk…The company accepts him for the position two days later….”

by Brett Pribble

“If only they hadn’t dressed in garments that only Satan would admire, like when they dress as him, or pimps and prostitutes, or in skimpy police uniforms…If only they weren’t just another excuse to do nothing.”

by Nolan Knight

“Now sleep stutters. Every night, a window. Its draft cold, blue.”

by Miriam McEwen

“You live inside this mirror now. A hard bruise marking your cleavage. A friend, barefoot, cutting a path for your chair through the wood rot and wild mushrooms. You amaze him. As if nothing scares you.”   

by Joseph Labriola

“it wasn't the book, so much as his relationship to it—if that makes sense…This one, of course, was blank.”

by u.v.ray

“all o’reilly knows is every time he sinks that dart into his flesh it feels like being cast adrift in a sea a warm marmalade.”

by David Luntz

“…insane, sure, but don’t forget the moment you bumped into Poe’s ape in a gas-lit Parisian alleyway, wearing a negligée of weeping butterflies and a stovepipe hat…”

by Pam Avoledo

“Over here, Sarah calls, and we are running on the green grass in the small field.”