The tailor is leaning over me, peering at the dimensions of my head, going so far as to feel my skull with his plastic-man hands. He makes guttural cawing sounds as he begins lifting my varied limbs, pulling at them, checking their mobility and lengths. Then he rechecks my air-tight body diaper for leaks; pores […]
Fiction
Lindsay Anderberg: Coco
When I woke up I knew I was pregnant with Coco. It was raining and my window was open. While I was sleeping, droplets of water had pushed through the screen holes and ricocheted off of the windowsill’s chipping, white paint in unlikely trajectories. The drops landed in an uneven spray across the blanket covering […]
Francine Witte: Trust
Sarah had given up on trust. Then she met Harley. He was so oozy with charm, she stopped being careful. He would tell her how pretty she looked in her print dress even though she was wearing a pantsuit. And just as she was about to correct him, he would give her his dazzle smile, […]
Joseph Rogers: Go Children Slow
There are a few different routes from here; it all depends who’s in the car with you. Say it’s her—she’s probably beside you on the front seat of a ’78 Impala with all your friends’ initials carved into the maroon foam on the roof. Her initials are right next to yours. They were the first […]
Andrew Palmer: Homage
A series of conversations about breaking stuff. “I really don’t want to talk about this.” “Fine. Okay,” said Kate. This was just last night. Long silence for a phone conversation, maybe ten seconds, maybe even fifteen or twenty. Not twenty. But long. Maybe fifteen. “But,” he said, “we’re gonna talk about it anyway, aren’t we,” […]
R.G. O’Reilly: Father Image
Timmy and his younger brother Chip waited at the door of the Brooklyn Gardens shuttle bus. The bus leaned to one side, hissed and threw open its doors. “Thanks, mister!” they yelled to the driver as they jumped to the sidewalk. Chip loosened the necktie noose that had been strangling him through the Mass. “Why […]