by MB Valente...At recess that first day she told me to punch a boy she pointed out and I did. He hit me back and got in trouble but nobody yelled at me. I just crouched in her shadow and felt its warmth fall over me like a wing.

by Liz Berkstresser...When the floor stops moving, they take us off the truck. There’s a trail of blood leading to an open space with a green velvet floor.

by Michael Czyzniejewski...I felt compelled to sit, peck at the keys, so many of them missing, yet just enough, the exact keys that I needed still there: Despite me never playing before, not a note, I played a song, my fingers gliding, the music flowing.

by Zebulon Huset...There’s always a seed crystal ready to replicate itself. The mother-soup bags. It’s not like the bags of bags were precious, but I dreamed better when I knew they were safe.

by Natalie Paris...For a long while, no one would notice her car in the ocean of cars, stretching out towards the horizon—north, south, east, and west—and that was just the way that Marcie would have wanted it. Her car could be anyone’s. No one would bother her.

by Jack Fisher...everyone within smelling distance would remember what had floated past them. Chickens. Mattresses. Gas cans. Family photos. A horse with one eye open. A young woman's wedding dress, moving in the current as though the bride were still inside it.

by William Taylor Jr. ... Me and my 5 dollars worth of sad songs on the jukebox heart, my Lost Highway heart, my Richard Brautigan San Francisco Heart, my Brothers Karamazov heart, my one last drink at 3 a.m. heart,

by Julieanne Larick...if you think our legs are green pears in a bowl if you think there’s merit to wearing a leotard in the dark take us home tonight and fistfeed us chex-mix by the bucketful

by Tymber Wolf...No one here drinks water. They only bathe in it on Sundays. They aren’t a dirty bunch, just don’t want to pay the price of water in the desert. They have an unspoken culture to use what they are willing to have.

by Casey Jo Graham Welmers...I wasn’t convinced of its death. For three days I just left it in the tank, fins dropping across the water like a gossamer veil. Then I scooped it out with my bare hand and buried it as deep as I possibly could in our immaculate lawn.

by Elissa Field...I eye one under glass in diesel green, iridescent like rainbows on petrol. Laser embossed handgrips in swirls of vining flowers. I’d fired yours at the range. First time I heard a shot that close, I cried.

Interview by Mandira Pattnaik... "Reading can begin to feel easier and less risky, while, with each passing day, we grow more judgmental of our own work. I would say: take the risk. Begin afraid. What is the worst that could happen?"

by Paul Chuks...Any artist who stays back and refuses Western audience or does not collaborate with a Western star or is not affiliated with any Western label is seen as unambitious and a local champion. A defeatist mindset that is reflective of the sharp fangs of colonialism still burrowed in our psyche.

by Thad DeVassie...They say it comes with electrolytes. Even the chosen typeface for the word electrolytes! looks exciting and exuberant, and the sound of it rolling off the tongue conjures up images of tiny prizes floating in the fluid.

by Sarp Sozdinler...First: remove all the mirrors in your home. Hide them in the crawl space, bury them in your landlord’s garden, shove them in the backseat of a stranger’s car.

by Claire Lee...The word bubbles under his skin, then pops, dissipating into his blood like soap, air. Brother’s tongue is dry as desert, doesn’t feel the slow, heavy heartbeat need to wet it.

by Ben Starr...Until he could fall asleep while he was already sleeping, burying sleep deep inside pockets fast asleep, tucked away like the hand-painted nesting dolls my grandmother brought with her when she swam the Atlantic.

by Emily Rinkema...The Mongols don’t notice me right away. I’m wearing sweatpants, wool socks, and a Dogs are My People hoodie, which I haven’t taken off since I checked in two days ago, alone.

by Ewen Glass...is not a pub, it’s a stream, meandering black circles halved by footbridge. Kids rhyme their way past skulking little duckies

by Jason Davidson...and I thought I heard glass breaking and wondered if I would ever eat chocolate again and wondered if I would remember the language of this compromise