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by Margaret Ries

Make the pieces small. Easier to explain a hand or a foot. A whole body’s something else.

But what to do about the blood? What if the ground sheet of plastic is not enough? I had imagined the job would be as easy as sawing logs for a fire. But when I start in, the blood begins oozing thick and gloppy onto the basement floor. It’s hard to keep a grip. She’s already gone stiff and she shoots down the plastic like she’s on one of those waterslides I used to make for Danny out in the backyard. 

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by MJ McGinn

1)    Don’t look now, but they’re coming. They want your shit. They want it. They want it and nobody cares how you never had a birthday party. They’re hungry and wanting and wanting and hungry and wanting, and most of all, they’re coming.

2)    I live on the backs of trains where it’s warm enough. If you can’t count the spokes, it’s moving too fast to get on or off.

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by Meredith Gordon

This quiz is for self-enrichment only. Its content may be triggering.
Any reaction should prompt further self-study. There is one correct
answer for each question, but there are no wrong answers.

A classroom, a back row, a dilemma: A 500-page statistics book sits with
its spine uncracked on your desk. Under your desk, thick, glossy issues of
Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Self, are splayed open
in your lap.

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by Genevieve Abravanel

The allegorical doctor has a bottle. A cloudy glass vessel with dark syrup inside. “This is the cure for what ails you. Your liver, for instance.”  

“There’s nothing wrong with my liver.” Julia clutches her purse. Gucci, green snake skin, off-season, on sale.  

“Just an example.”  

“How much does it cost?” Julia will not tell Ted. She’ll use her private money.  

“Everything and nothing.”  

Julia hesitates. Considers Dr. Friedrich with his half-moon glasses and tweed jacket.

by Thomas Benz

Kawakami Sumio, Ginza, 1929

The Larkins were not splashy people. You wouldn’t find their photograph in a slick magazine featuring charity balls, nor would their obituaries be filled with public triumphs. Yet they were in that unfortunate category of people who were average with above average yearnings. It wasn’t so much that they envied the rich, or anyone else with the privileges of exclusive membership, as they were curious, wanting every now and then a taste of the extraordinary, a peek through a gap in the carnival tent,

by Nathaniel Eddy

unknown (late 1700s-early 1800s)

Mitchell appeared at my door like one of those summer storms that blows in swift, unexpected. Dark clothing, hair like a blanket of slanting rainfall. I had taken the day to stay home and practice self-care which meant I’d remained in bed looking at the internet. News headlines and social media feeds, articles about moon bathing, intentionality, the endless therapy memes. I had been watching a video about breathing techniques when Mitchell knocked and told me that Francine had asked him to leave. He said this in the way of someone under anesthesia: thick,