by Judah Greenberg In [the Jewish] view of the world, though, liking is the first step to losing: if “they” know that you love it, “they’ll” try to take it. – Michael Wex, Born to Kvetch Rabbi Ezra Lewicki was seventy-seven when he died in January of 1935, his fingers dyed black and blue from…
Category: Fiction
Come to Mama
by Mimi Manyin As a first-generation refugee, Z. had never stayed at a resort before, let alone one filled with ghosts. All she wanted was to experience the grand luxury and comfort enjoyed by well-to-do Americans, dead or alive. She wanted to feel their soft beds, drink their fancy teas, and admire panoramic views of…
Kerosene
by Meghana Mysore The sky in Oregon blazed orange. Lakshmi looked outside, and thought of her mother’s kerosene lamp burning on through the night’s darkness. In India, she kept it on her nightstand, and left it on when Lakshmi’s father was out late at the neighbor’s house, chattering away. Lakshmi could hear the whispers of…
Internet Girls, by JSA Lowe
JSA Lowe‘s poems have appeared most recently in DIAGRAM, GASHER, Hobart, Salt Hill Journal, Superstition Review, Third Coast, and Versal, as well as previously in AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, and Salamander. Her chapbooks, DOE and Cherry-emily, were published by Particle Series Books (2008) and Dancing Girl Press (2017). She…
Two Short Stories by RL Goldberg
Hatred I do have an anticipatory view of my life. What I expect: someone, a woman, or maybe a very muscular woman, always waiting on the other side of the door. When I open it, she says, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” We begin to talk about this, my therapist and me. She…
“Comrade Naomi Bye” by Cynthia Dewi Oka
“We’ve exhausted all other solutions,” my protégé, Naya, is saying through steepled hands from the top right-hand box of the Zoom gallery. I’ve known Naya since she was a gangly teen shuffling behind her social worker into CHANGE’s then one-room office in Philly, wearing a too-big Free Mumia T-shirt. I took her on as an…
Uterus by Þórdís Helgadóttir Trans. Larissa Kyzer
Elí caught his wife sucking chicken with his best friend. Alís had told him she was going to the gym after work, but then he saw their car outside Óttar’s house as he was biking past. Elí knocked on the door; he tested the knob, found it unlocked, and walked in. There they were,…
Engineer’s Dream by Nick Arvin
Three years passed, and the doorbell rang. There was no warning, no call ahead, no email, no text, no mental preparation. I opened the door – Troy. My brother. Me and Troy. Here is the bitter, tedious backstory of fraternal debacle: Older brother stole younger brother’s girlfriend. And, yes, I despised Troy for it,…
Dog Tar by Trevor Shikaze
I swore I would never make dog tar. “Surely there are other animals,” I would say, “to capture and render in backyard furnaces. Surely we don’t need to resort to dogs.” The realists pushed back: “What are you going to catch, then? Deer? There are no more deer. Rats? Too small. Raccoons? You could…
In Which I Try to Save the World from Total Destruction Through the Power of Art by Emily Mitchell
The man in the apartment next to mine has come here from another planet to destroy civilization. His mission is to go to that facility in Arizona where the government keeps all the really deadly viruses and steal some to release at different points around the globe. Thanks to our modern, international transportation system, they…