PLUMMETING

Gary Fincke
1 In the played-out strip mine, during our night hike, my father led us Scouts along a trail that peaked at the narrow crest of worthlessness that pitched down into darkness, and I knelt to grip the ground with my hands, certain I could fall. Every boy who noticed said nothing.  My father talked me to my feet and guided ... Read More

INCIDENT IN BERLIN

Andrey Gritsman
The garden was taken over by the azaleas. The multitude of flowers stood dormant in the late Sunday afternoon. There was also a palm tree (Sergei still couldn’t get used to the palm trees), a poplar, and plenty of ivies shooting up the sunlit white stucco wall. Most of the trees were planted by the previous owner in the twenties ... Read More

Wrack

Holly Karapetkova
The ocean doesn’t ask forgiveness. Overnight in a sudden fit of disgust it thrusts mound upon mound of seaweed on the shore, the pale sand a tangle of mahogany and rust for half a kilometer. Then slowly over several months, one high tide at a time, it takes each lamina back as though it had forgotten the story it was ... Read More

Niagara Falls

Robert Scotellaro
High-stakes
Picture a man of average stature and looks beside a woman of average stature and looks on a flight to New York from small Midwestern towns.  Picture him telling her he is a high-stakes mogul on his way to put a bow on a deal involving an entire block of buildings, what he’d like her to imagine as skyscrapers.  ... Read More

Interview with Adam Schwartz 

Questions by Nathan Leslie
Adam Schwartz’s debut collection of stories, The Rest of the World, won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2020 prize for fiction

90’s Demi-God Dreams

April Stettner
Like most great ideas, it takes shape in your best friend's bedroom. It's ‘92, and you're alternating between The Sunday's

Autumn Leaves in Johannesburg

Jerry Chiemeke
It’s 10am in Lagos — probably 11am someplace else — and I can’t be bothered to leave my bed. Power has just been restored,

The Floating Theater: Our New Season

Valerie Fox
(2120-21-22 Offerings) All for one fee, ending in Winter. The Scarlet Ibis. Lieutenant Frank, the TV detective, returns from his

Letter to You Which I Know You Won’t Read So Why Do I Bother?

Francine Witte

Let me start again. I had an opening paragraph I decided to take out. You were wrong, but that paragraph

Polished Penny Loafers

Michael Pulley

Social Security office. God, how she hated that place. How they put you through questioning -- just short of frisking.

Inheritance

Jenna Heller
in the backyard the ticker-tape of young paper birch flickers in the breeze a chain-link fence keeps the wild out

En Garde

Claire Guyton

Sergei’s scar started just below his hairline over the left eyebrow and cut across his face on an almost perfect

Lockdown

Michael Gushue
Space is rubber. Time is glue. Each day tangled in its nematode hours. The beer bottle contracts in the hand,

The Bear

Scott Mitchel May

Reagan was a good man. Slow towards the end, but good. The Bear met him exactly three times and he

The lighter black

Diarmuid ó Maolalaí 
the dublin quays, night on the river, a little way west and quite nearby to heuston. cars moving forward without

Summer Love/Death Song

Timmy Reed
The cicadas came out of the ground just as the world started heating up. They had not seen the sun

Doljabi

Shawna Ervin
In the photo you are serious, your lips slightly puckered over one tooth, pink vest, Easter-green sleeves, new silk creased

GONE

Carole Rosenthal
Being trapped in an elevator is one of my fears. Not a phobia, I have enough issues but no phobias, unless

April 2021: Recrudescence

J.K. Daniels
A fresh outbreak, another strain and here we are again, delinked. An error message, the zizz of the overheated laptop,