Fiction

I said to my kids, “Trust me, you don’t want to know. You’ll wish you could go back to not knowing, but by then it’ll be too late.”

In the early days of that frigid winter, Whitt spent half his time staring out the kitchen window. His beloved guitar leaned unplucked and gathering dust against a wall.

On the day he died Jack DeFazio stood and waited for a number to materialize, an idea to emerge from the dark recesses of the casino, a word to become flesh above a green table. Nothing.

Like some unseen blight burrowed deep in the local vines, divorce kept preying on Boundary Street. The trend seemed a stealthy contagion drawing closer and closer, its malign influence headed squarely at the Copeland’s corner lot.

One night, we meet the boogeyman. My friends and I, arms linked, are belting a top forties hit. We are a loud and proud girl group. As we crest the hill, a man stands laughing across the street.

We could go years without it ever happening, and then word would spread that we were going to get to see a movie.

The trouble began three days ago when Tingting had stopped answering Betty’s calls, messages, then emails. For two days, before she arrived at the high school where she taught orchestra, Betty had waited outside Tingting’s pharmacy clinic.

Margot never liked her name, which was unfortunate because she was sitting in a doctor’s office waiting to hear it. Margot.

I remember I was at the end of a long twisted phone chord in a corner of my parents’ front hall when you first asked me out the summer before we went to college. You said I’d like to take you to Houlihan’s for dinner, knowing I liked the booths in the back that were shrouded by plastic vines and noisy strands of beads.

One sees all manner of life rock up in the waiting room of a doctor’s surgery. You have the red-faced teens with their embarrassing infections sat next to the bleary-eyed mammies comforting scabby-arsed babies.

My mother used to say that lobsters scream when boiled, but it’s only air escaping the shell. I was seven when she first told me this, standing at her station in Cannery Building C, watching her feed crawlers into the steamer.

The first time I clapped eyes on Echo Wolfeson she was playing a kangaroo.

New in town, I’d gone to meet the coaches. In Jackson, the sport was politicized. More oligarchy than meritocracy. I went into the Field House prepared to make my case. Show film. Stats. I had it all ready.

The man’s grey eyes, no light in them. The tug on the corners of his mouth rendering a smile impossible. Lucy had seen a look like that before.

You know Banesa Delgado walks home with you cuz she hungry—right? I mean, you the fattest freshman in North Bergen High. You think the baddest bitch in the volleyball team—and that’s a lot to say, cuz alladem bad—wanna be seen nowhere with you?

Four AM. Miami-Dade County was as quiet as it would ever be until the sun winked out but still too noisy. Cruising west on 41, I half-listened to the radio to block out the tumult.

Perp-Walk Prologue I was a good girl. Before I went viral, before anyone chanted about locking me up or threatened me with death (at first only online), I never expected to be arrested. When I first got handcuffed, I couldn’t stop crying. Wondering: how can this be happening to me? A hard-working scholarship kid; a

PART 1: A Period of Adjustment             Two weeks after Roger Pratt graduated from Georgetown Law School in Washington DC, he and his fiancé Joyce Johnson, drove back to their hometown of Chicago in a modest, rented van with a few boxes of clothes and other belongings. They had lived in

After Sharon’s death, shot dead on the street on her way to his place, possibly by a stray bullet, Withers lost his art. His photography exhibits, Men with Beards and Beautiful, Beautiful, Turds, had put him on the map. And now, after her murder, Pictures of Sharon. What did it matter? One solitary bullet, whether

People often disappeared from our apartment building on Manila Ave. At least that’s what Kuya Jem used to tell us. He wasn’t really our brother. That’s just what everyone in our building called him—Kuya. He did a lot of things for us and the other tenants. In the morning, he tended to the halaman planted

The first time I danced for Harry, he would not look at me. His eyes stayed fixed on something just over my shoulder or above my head, so that though it seemed he was watching me as I moved, he really wasn’t. I really, really wanted him to watch. I was wearing the mid-calf indigo

It was a night tailor-made for lunatics, a supermoon hanging low above the town like a giant communion wafer pinned up against the inky dark sky, the night air crisp and of a sort that made breath visible. Lyric FM and the eclectic instrumentals of Night Train filled the car, the DJ’s familiar husky drawl

My father is a learned man who teaches history in the college in Marash, a small city at the foot of the Taurus Mountains. When the government forces the school to shut down, he believes it is just the beginning. “What is next?” he demands angrily to anyone who will listen. “Surrender our books? Surrender

Gabriel woke up early, before light. He dressed in the dark and carried his backpack down to the kitchen and dropped it on the floor by the screen door. His father had already made bacon and eggs and toast and coffee. Gabriel sat down and rubbed his eyes and waited. His father put a plate

1. Just before the Internet. Just before the creeks dry up and shrink, and the heat grows unbearable. Just before they bulldoze most of the woods and build the ugly duplexes. Before all of that, there was the two of us. June and I, selfish, clever, bright and dizzied by our own still-new imaginations. June

Devon wore the boat hat—blue with Saint Augustine’s school insignia, two white oars crossed on an embroidered field of gold. Despite the ranger’s booming voice, Devon had trouble making out the words over the heads of his classmates. He couldn’t see the ranger’s lips, hear his intonations. He turned away and watched a bird land,

You left behind two racks of wall-to-wall clothes that fill a walk-in closet cavernous enough to have garaged the Jaguar you totaled after letting your insurance expire. In back hangs a pallor-dusted cocktail dress. The one you wore that palm-sweaty Sunday plotted by Cathy after I finagled her out of her most recent DUI where

One early evening I got punched in the head. I didn’t know, first of all, nor feel it. No preamble. No anticipation. I could have been anywhere, drinking beer, avoiding nuisance. But an unplanned decision and I get the job. I arrived, the girl in bits. I had no way to play it. She was

Queenie had been at her father’s desk at the Massey-Ferguson dealership in Chadron, Nebraska, for almost a month since her return from Madagascar. In that time she’d fired lazy Lefty Gilday and Toot Banks, both of whom drank on the job. Neither had sold a tractor or combine harvester or a baler in more than

It was a sinkhole that took my mother-in-law, Spicy, during my Christmas visit as a new, unwelcome bride to the family home in Florida. A tiny, livid widow tanned almost mahogany, she was sunning herself in the back yard when there was a whooshing sound. She looked with irritation up at my window—as if it

You don’t fully remember. You think you were thirteen when you heard Sade screaming in the courtyard of your boarding school. Your father often drove over two hours to get you and your brother there. It was one of the best schools in Lagos City with state-of-the-art facilities. Immaculate education. You only had one year

When Kwame called to arrange the job interview—his voice like sea glass and not at all like the sharp-tongued recruiters who grated me with questions about long-term goals and role models—I was relieved. It had been almost a year since I graduated from school into what the headlines were calling a “jobless recovery.” My college

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

This piece is part of our Winter 2023 print issue, available for purchase here.          

I should have known when the neighbor’s rooster came in our yard one morning and crowed long and loud that nothing was set to go well that day, a sign of trouble like the old heads liked to say. I had folded and unfolded my father’s letter looking at the few words he had scrawled

On a Tuesday evening in late July, Miriam and her lover Ted watched a storm roll in over the lake. They met at her dock every evening after Ted returned from visiting hours at the memory care unit. There, like a loyal goose, he had shared dinner with his wife, who spoke to him in

Tuesday, Sept. 8th – Last “Opening Day” Bullshit As I munch on some day-old bagels, push the sour fruit back and forth across my paper plate, the woman on stage keeps screeching, her words blur across the cafeteria like a raincloud. I can’t even pretend to indulge her. Some self-important ass-hat in high heels, tugging

“Don’t be messin with my hustle, now,” Sandra says, her voice rough as a gravel path. We’re drilling our way down Broadway and Sandra adds, “I’m gonna push these motherfuckers into the street if they don’t get outta my way.” Nearby, a woman, long blond hair, young, wearing leggings, swoops in front of us, pushing

It started innocently enough—letter here, a word there—and he reasoned that Mrs. Pookutty needed the help, her English-in-retirement simply having acquired some rust since her School-Principal heyday. She probably meant to use the right word all along, the one Prabhakar had just typed. “The unexploded ordnance just lay thier, partially buried in the sand –

The two Travelers, both women, one older, one young, together in a pickup with a camper shell where they sometimes slept. They drove the rural and snow-spackled Dakotas towards the horizon on a wintry afternoon across flat farmland blanketed in snow under the threat of more weather. “Nana, those are mountains.” “Serena, those are clouds.”

She came to the island with her two slim volumes of poems and the outfit she always wore to readings. The sweater jacket that her first husband, the artist, had given her. The slightly flared jeans from that store in Soho. And the patent leather flats that turned out to be completely wrong for walking

Pomegranate by the acclaimed author Helen Elaine Lee is one of the most significant novels of the last decade. It has received glowing reviews, and it was recently chosen by Amazon’s editors as one of the Best Books of the Year So Far, at #6. How challenging it is to write with compassion on each page,

We’d gotten hung up an extra half-day and which made us late retrieving the body. Us meaning me, and my half-brother Harlan who’d recently turned seventeen. I was three years older, and the house, for better or worse, fell to us. As did our dad’s hard-used, one-ton Chevy flatbed with the homemade driver’s side running

Russell’s Knob, New Jersey 1866 Duncan Smoot received reliable word that there were a few remaining people at the old plantation on Kenworthy Island. They were said to be too frail to leave, were living in hovels on the place. The Kenworthy were long gone. And though they’d taken the island, the Union Army was

Russell’s Knob, New Jersey 1933 I. The homestead is noisy with bird calls. Who is the particularly worrisome visitor who is disturbing his sleep, his waking? Robert’s mother would know the name of each bird at a snap. Robert’s mother was fond of birds and was delighted with them. He feels uneasy here now, on

“I need you at the meeting tonight,” Van says. They drive through the entrance to the once luxurious golf course. A developer plans to convert the fairways and greens into housing. “I wonder what score I would have to shoot to block the sale,” Nick says. His tone is solemn. He knows such faith in

Any moment can change your life in ways you would never have anticipated. For me, it was the time I went to the rivermen. I’d gone to rid myself of my “illness,” that hefty sack of burdens that was about to sink me to the depth of despair forever. The visit to the river had

In Sayulita, the spaces are small. Nicole passes stores and cafés that would serve as closets where she’s from, and no one apologizes for not having a bathroom, simply wagging their heads, “Aquí, no,” and gesturing at some unnamed place. At night, overpacked bars spill out into the street, upsetting the flow of traffic and

Sena Desai Gopal is a journalist specializing in science and medicine, food, and travel. She is the author of The 86thVillage, her debut novel. She was born and raised in India and now lives in Boston with her husband and two children. Her work has been published in The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Modern Farmer,

Twenty Stories: New and Selected by Jack Driscoll is the winner of Pushcart’s Editors Book Awards, and it is easy to see why this collection is already garnering praise and prizes. Jack Driscoll is a master of the short story (although that is not all he writes) and these twenty tales underscore his accomplishment. Here

This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

This piece is part of our Winter 2022 print issue, available for purchase here.

In the mountains below Vladikavkaz, Johnny’s father splits bricks. One by one with a hammer. On the other side of the POW camp, the shards are shattered into gravel. The gravel is packed into crates, then sent in trains to be churned elsewhere into concrete. The concrete is then piped politely into bricks. The blue

When my mom stood on her seat in front of the entire school and made a show of bowing at me after my performance, I swallowed back the urge to laugh. On some level, I knew she was performing as much from the audience as I was from the stage. I had put on an

I think about the lies they tell in movies based on true stories. Well, this one ain’t like that—a lie. Wish it was. In Hialeah, people said the devil came up from hell, made Angelo do what he did. His Ina thought it was because of Angelo’s skin—the only other Filipino—darker than me with bigger

Robert and those who survive the following summer will ask themselves: Did that election season really happen when they were children? Are they re-writing the past to cut the pain? Then their collective trauma unclenches. That summer of romance and air conditioning happened, they assure each other, especially ones that fled North and gather at

Alice clicks off the radio on her desk. Her now-silent office on the 12th floor of an Art Deco skyscraper on Dearborn is mercilessly air conditioned, but beyond the plate glass of her windows, she knows the city is sweltering through another white-skied August afternoon. She cannot listen to the news on public radio any

A WORLD lit up by the glint of snow. They drove the long drive in, up the steadily sloping hill, winding for no good reason around sweeping curves carved into the vast and open grounds. Pete Connerly drove and hummed along with the radio, finger-tapping the steering-wheel to the beat. Del Connerly imagined the view

Lee thought of himself as a fish. Fish were players; they hung out just beyond the current, in the calm eddies, and waited for things to come floating their way. When he was a little kid, his old man used to take him fishing when the weather got cool, late in the fall, on the

There was no compound wall around the construction site, no watchman to tell the two girls they could not enter. Holding hands, they scurried behind an idle cement mixer and crouched low. Book bags rustled, tiffin carriers squeaked. Four eyes tracked skyward along the building’s length. Ten stories. A proper high rise, the township’s first.

Mid-June, shimmering heat. First date. Roy’s: her choice. Daisy ordered roast chicken; Ben ordered a whole trout. “One of the most underrated fish,” he declared. After two bites, he asked for her fork and loaded up a mouthful after deftly sifting out the bones. “You have to try this.” “I don’t eat fish,” Daisy said,

Sahdëv was twelve when he met his first Foreign Man. He entered Chirag Ali Street, humming under his breath, nursing the straps of his backpack, and saw him sitting on the milestone that was locally called Sanam Bewafa, Unfaithful Beloved, after the Salman Khan film: it read Delhi 793 even when the road didn’t take

“Wake up! Now no more dozing in sweet sleep We have to go. The goddess gave instructions.” They did as I had said. But even then I could not lead my men away unharmed. The youngest one —Elpenor was his name— Not very brave in war, nor very smart, was lying high up in the

  Former Fantasticks At silent 6AM, by the dawn’s early laptop light, I find them again: our stars. Onscreen, online– two fellow Thespians; two former Fantasticks. Blasts from my past. A boy and girl, then. And see, I’d loved, in my tortured teen way, both of them. I feel my fingers shake. Even now, in

She watched as the jury came in, watched with that dream detachment that sometimes comes to people when they are in the midst of life-changing moments whether they know it or not. She watched them take their seats, and in what almost seemed a rehearsed way, they all wore the same bland emotionless expression, if

As the choir brings the psalm to life, Fr. Daniel taps one finger on the armrest, in time to the beat of his own impatience. Seeing Samuel squirm in Stacy’s arms, and seeing Stacy rock him, ever so slightly, and seeing Joseph tap his fingers and shift his feet and adjust his tie and look

The dirt road stretched out before him in the late afternoon sun, flat and taut like a ribbon wrapped around a present—but this day didn’t feel like much of a gift. He hated driving water trucks back and forth on these monotonous roads. He hated the mindless hours of fuzzy talk-show radio and sagebrush. Hell,

LYNN People without an app need a map, and Lynn just gave away her last map. Its legend shows a hotdog for a restaurant and a bed for a hotel. The map was in her glove box where she’d never in her life kept a glove. She’d gone to Valley Hardware, intent on buying what

Reflections of the ceiling fan were captured in the shattered glass beneath the window frame. Dad was in the middle of the room holding a saucer identical to the one he’d just thrown on the floor. Mom was barely inside the doorframe, her legs were spread wide. She looked domineering, even though she was without

(Summer) In June your mother asks for the ornaments. Your brother is at work and your fat sister is useless, so you bring the boxes down from the attic. There are more than a hundred of them. Colorful balls, Hallmark Snoopys, and gluey nursery school popsicle trees hang together with invisible threads. Sweating profusely, you

1 Across: preoccupied by a worrisome fixation that causes you to turn within O B S E S S E D An email, written but never sent, from Feather to Elise Dear Elise, How could you become so obsessed with somebody that doesn’t exist? I mean, we’re talking about a drawing, unfinished, made of chalk,