Featured – swamp pink

People you meet

November 11, 2026

freeway tucked in prairies: a slice of cheesebetween the prayer hands of a nun the big clock’s for sale. Blister from wearing women’s shoes all day I don’t like the word “miracle.” It flattens things. I can fix that. The thread one half of a pursed set of lips. at 5 am the asphalt barely visible, a...

The Dermatologist

November 11, 2026

I was drawing on a napkin when the dermatologist asked if the chair across from me was occupied. I shook my head, and he set down a small leather briefcase. The table lurched; my pen tore through the eye of the man across the room. The dermatologist reached to steady the table. His hands were...

Autobiography

November 11, 2026

At the time I spent my time reading Gertrude Stein. I spent so much time reading Gertrude Stein and also Proust I was no longer American. I was cured. The laughter of local flora became unintelligible. The current president ceased to matter and possibly to exist. The village emotions became garish, and my eyesight slowly...

Pig Hearts

November 10, 2026

Mr Richards was a popular teacher, young enough for us to look up to. He got away with things we never would have let our older teachers do, like wearing gym shorts, or telling us stories of god intervening in daily life. His favourite story was about an oak tree falling on his girlfriend’s car....

Here Be Dragons

November 10, 2026

I didn’t realize I had encountered a dragon until I was twenty-three. At that point, it had happened about thirteen years prior, but I had never noticed that it was a dragon specifically. Sure, I knew what it was. Sure, I glimpsed it from time-to-time. But it was only ever in passing, and it was...

The Dissidents

November 10, 2026

Ultimately, they hired me from the surprisingly vast pool of applicants because, in addition to my expertly-exaggerated extermination experience, I told the interviewer a rather riveting story about a rat encounter from my infancy. When I was three years old, I said, and you’re never going to believe this, a fat, greasy rat with a...

So This Is Where We Find Ourselves

November 10, 2026

You present me a choice: kiss in the city or to kiss in the forest. I am not allowed to say either, not allowed to say both. I open my mouth, shut it. I come to understand there may be a wrong answer. You want eloquence where I offer hunger. I turn to seek guidancefrom the river but the...

At the Bottom of the Sea

November 10, 2026

my dead parents step closer shaded by the underbelly of a passing steamship a dark cloud only I can see my sadness inside I dissolve into the storm before me the road away blocked by a family of thinning trees they’ve suffered the wind their branches rattled free of their color their reds and yellowsa traffic light that won’t turn...

A Beautiful House

November 10, 2026

Edgar lived in a beautiful house. The house had the look of a finely wrapped gift with its neat trim and painted shutters, and from it Edgar could easily walk to his son’s daycare. One day upon arrival at the daycare, he was told by Mr. Dance, the director, that his son had already been...

I Allowed Grief to Cradle Me

November 10, 2026

The first time I saw human death was when I was six years old. Our dad took us to our great aunt June’s funeral. When viewing her body, my first dead body, I saw her eyes closed, her hands folded at her chest, wearing a sparkling pink dress. Her hair also looked different from the...

This Nameless Mantle

November 10, 2026

The first thing I did after they fired me was go to the park. I had expected them to hand me a cardboard box to pack my belongings, like they do in the movies, but I had brought nothing to the office except my company laptop, which they took, and a fidget spinner that easily...

WHAT I HEAR I HEAR

November 10, 2026

A low ringing in the ear of the forest. An animal, never more than one year from death, dragging forward in time. If I’m patient, I’ll listen while a mate calls to other mates, while she gathers herself for this or that. Maybe I’ll leave these words alone to rise and fall by themselves—drinks swallowing their ice. Last summer I grew at the waist, and...