Fiction
From the Current Issue
The Proposal
The sun isn’t hiding in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Half-dressed kids dance in front of the fire hydrant, soothing sweaty skin in the cool water blasting from its pumper nozzle. Zola, Kilimanjaro’s godsister, sits outside in their godmother’s fenced garden, plucking feathers from a limp chicken. Nandi stands in the shadow of the doorway catching a …
Other Side of the Mountain
That which is sublime is not humanity, but nature. Nature does not boast of its superiority, nor does it seek revenge on humankind. One day when I was walking through a forest, I came to a brink of a door opening to “the cosmos” and I realized that I saw the “sublime unity” from that door. This state …
Sound Proof
I shed my clothes and the pain of the week. Forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours ago we were on the couch in your living room. You comforted me as I cried myself to sleep, nightmares of my childhood on repeat. Forty-one hours ago you and Georgie pranced around the kitchen while I cooked us breakfast. You …
Anya
Sasha sat and watched the leaves fall from the trees in Central Park. It made him feel young again. Of course, he was not young. He was very old. Layers of tan skin cascaded upon one another to create his face. His bright blue eyes, now his only staple, shone through the layers. Women used to fall for those eyes. Women still …
Mueller’s Bowling Alley
When I was in the fourth grade, Matt Fischer got stabbed outside Mueller’s Bowling Alley. He didn’t die or anything, but it was the talk of the town for months after it happened. That’s how small towns are. If you live in a big city, you’re used to people getting stabbed all the time, but …
Ten Things that May or May Not Have Happened
1. When I was three, I threw a snowball at my mother’s back—we were somewhere in the mountains of southern California. 2. My mother walked out on my father and me when I was in the third grade. I have this vivid memory I see sometimes. It consists of the front …