Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was stolen by a terrible necromancer. He and his rotting, clanking horde abducted her from the palace gardens and carried her away and away until ... [+]
Short Fiction
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who was stolen by a terrible necromancer. He and his rotting, clanking horde abducted her from the palace gardens and carried her away and away until ... [+]
we spent seven years
planning our route
thieved maps and charts
marked the dangerous spaces
... [+]
Bronagh's mother watched her toying with her food.
"Sit up straight, Bronnie," she chided, "and finish your dinner. Your father's ready to read you a story."
"I don't want to."
"Well, if you'd
... [+]
Colonel Mathura beckons me forward, but the balcony is a maw with a balustrade of marble teeth. The crowd devours me with their cheers. I shuffle forward to be consumed by their support. The midday ... [+]
Your widow came in to the bank today
Waving the certificate of your suicide around;
I go
... [+]
I met Mia for the first time at my tennis club. A small Chinese woman with dark brown eyes and short-cropped black hair, she greeted me with a heavy Chinese accent.
"Are you Ken?" she asked.
To my
... [+]
"So, you're happy, huh?" he says in disbelief.
He asks me this question several times during our two-hour get-together, trying to understand how I could feel so much happier about my life than he
... [+]
The summers aren't so lonely on Plum Island.
It's me, the plum trees, the plum birds,
and the
... [+]
Vicky was a Viking,
one as brave as brave could be.
On land she was a legend,
but she didn't like the sea.
Boats made Vicky queasy
and the waves made her feel yuck.
She'd rather not go
... [+]
Bellatrix Sakakino worked for a commercial bank, focusing on securities valuation and research, and nobody liked her. This was because of her tints and hues. The colors emanating from her person were ... [+]
dreaming in San Francisco is like
dreaming inside a cloud
where the promises of our parents
... [+]
Autumn's here—Happy New Year!
Not for me, that pallid substitute in January with its noisemakers and forgotten resolutions. My calendar resets annually with the opening of classroom doors, no
... [+]
Dapper in a topcoat and tails, feet moving fast and graceful as birds skimming still waters, he whirled and swooped, catching my mother, still young and slim, by the waist, bending her backward. She ... [+]
Flocks in flight,
Murmurations
Of rippling ribbons
Against rain-full skies
Above the
... [+]
Sarah feels bricked up, even though she's riding her bike. She feels caged, because of where she's riding her bike: to a coffee shop to meet an ex she's not sure she wants to meet. He called her to ... [+]
window seat
facing forward
racing westward on rails;
every twist a next vista
the last
... [+]
I've never been less than an hour early for my train. I don't know if it comes from a sense of heightened preparedness or an ongoing current of anxiety that doesn't even let me sleep in on weekends ... [+]
With a bit of whistling and a roll of the wrist
I slipped into some rusty overalls to go
... [+]
Tracy Jo Freely climbed a tree one day. A plum tree. The big plum tree at the end of Miro Street.
"When are you coming back down?" her parents asked her an hour later.
"Never," said Tracy Jo.
He
... [+]
He couldn't say exactly when it fell off, was sometime during the night when he was asleep. But when he woke up in the morning, the ring finger of his left hand was off, tucked underneath the pillow ... [+]