She placed a cup of the hot elixir on the counter before me. On the surface of the cup little dragonfish swirled around like visual laughter. I felt my stomach tighten and my heart speed up. Here we go . . .
Nonfiction
Persian Night
First Monsoon
by Nazanin Knudsen
10. Early Mornings The 5:00 AM train that goes through the Sixth Street underpass whistles in the distance. Shuffling the pillows, I try to find a position that offers some relief from the pressure in the back of my neck. I live in an apartment near the University of Arizona campus. As an only child […]
You’d Just Be Different, That’s All: Revisiting Catcher in the Rye in 2020
by Sam Rebelein
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know about is that crumby article I found a few years back. It was a really phony piece, in The Guardian or something and all, written by this very intellectual guy who says he re-reads Catcher in the Rye every […]
Being Fred
by Leslie Absher
Being Fred My Dad’s first CIA field assignment was in Athens, Greece. It was the late 1960s when my uncle Tom came to visit our family. He didn’t know his older brother was a spy then, though he suspected it. “One day your father and I were about to enter a store,” he told […]
Villain
by Holly Laurent
This essay was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.I want to kick the shit out of Facebook and Fox News. It’s an instinct I get from my dad. Whenever I got hurt as a kid, he’d launch into a physical comedy routine, beating the hell out of whatever hurt me. If I fell out of a […]
Your One Phone Call
by Lori Jakiela
I am eating Greek salad at Panera when my phone rings. I don’t usually pick up, but it’s been a week since my biopsy and I’m still sore and my right boob is bruised black and yellow and I’ve been waiting days that have stretched on like 600 miles of bad road. My boob looks […]
Twelve Steps Ahead
by Evan Lavender-Smith
“Twelve Steps Ahead” was nominated for The Best of the Net. This is one of two instances in your life when you will receive these instructions. There is only one step you’re allowed to hear this time—the last one. It will be the first thing you hear when you’re born and it will be one of […]
The Po’ele Box
by Kirby Wright
I SWEATED IT OUT on the floral-print couch between Troy and our mother. We were waiting for my old man to get home. My brother gnashed his gum. Jenny was visiting her friend Heidi Bathen and I was glad she was gone. I saw our reflection in the living room mirror—we had looks of impending […]
Bike to the Future
by Krista Foss
Image courtesy Kelly Sikkema The scrap yard at the north end of my long city street hummed like a dystopic anthill, the day I drove up in my 15-year-old compact car, parked in front of a heap of flattened wrecks winking in an oily sun, got out, and made my way to a busy […]
Some Notes on the Nonexistence of Wakanda
by Gerry Canavan
Academics who study science fiction have typically been fixated on what they see as its privileged relationship with futurity. By imagining a possible shape for the future that will someday arise out of the present—however prescient, realistic, or patently ridiculous a particular author’s imagination of that future might be—science fiction narratives help restore to us […]
