Sophie, Jackson Tupper     One day you were no longer you. You’d swallowed yourself in the deep of your sleep and escaped through a door in the side of your gut. By the time I awoke, already too late, I noticed the maculate window agape, long curtains contorted with unbidden breeze, the covers drawn…

Grasp, Elena Makansi     On the road that connects my part of town to yours, I waited for the nine o’clock night train to Penn Station. Octobers in Massachusetts smell wet, with the lingering humidity of summer and the imminent promise of snow. The train pulled onto the platform late, at 9:07, with a…

Debbie, Hollis Moore     The snow sticks lightly to the road in a pleasant way, shrinking the lanes to wet tire tracks in a delicate white landscape. This is western Massachusetts in February, quaint as pastoral England. Snowy fields, classy coffee shops, large estates. Barebones deciduous trees line the roads like patronizing forefathers. Zoë…

Soft Smoke, Colin Brooks       Montanus always had the best pot. He would show up, broad-shouldered, looking hefty and plaid clad beneath those Greek letters—not one of the brothers but not needing to be, with that Ziploc bag and the bigmouth laugh. Those nights were always the same, stickyhot after days of neck…

Low Tide Shanty District, Harrison Carpenter       For three days, the city has been on fire. Flames so hot the streets of gold are beginning to run, bringing pillagers and housewives with their prayer-lined tongues to their knees at abandoned intersections, armed with buckets, the collection plates for melting footprints of fallen deities…

Untitled, Julia Sub     is the way my grandfather thinks about jesus believes until it’s just called knowing like science or directions   his hands are hard as stone when water hits them in the sink washing some ceramic birds my grandmother left him   what i believe is he believes in god and…

October, Sophie Treppendahl     An hour west toward the beginning of Long Island we drive to a party in Hicksville. We pass a series of one-story houses. Airplanes, coming or going, chase the birds from the sky.   A blue hydrangea blocks the back porch, where the hosts are wide-eyed on coke and their mother…

Universale, Isabel Schneider     Actually, I’m Jewish. It’s a phrase I’m used to saying, for one reason or another. What are you doing for Christmas? Actually, I’m Jewish. (Subtext: going to a Chinese restaurant.) Why are you dressed in a suit and walking away from class on the first day of the quarter? Actually, I’m Jewish.…

Amalfi Coast, Eliza Delaney     On the day the sky wept blood over Texas we stood together a little apart   Bad posture against chalky aluminum fence, braids pulled tight and neat beneath the sometimes   Clear and lying blue infinity. She turned to me, nonchalant with a whoosh of plaid skirt and a…

Tod’s Point Sunset, Alexandra Metter [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Death] Brian’s snore raked through Eleanor’s ears. His nasal strip and her earplugs had failed her again and she was up, smothering a pillow over her face. No remedy ever worked a permanent miracle. No food after seven p.m. only kept their cholesterol down, but throwing…

Bed of Puzzles, Kathleen McIntyre [Trigger Warning: Depictions of Death] My mom is dying. We are in her hospital room. It is 2 am or 4 am. It smells like hand sanitizer. There are watercolors of cows on the walls. Mom was in a terrifying car accident and has cancer. She is wrapped in hospital…

Untitled, Rachel Adler     But I shrank two inches about a month ago. It was the day my mother’s fiancé and his son moved in, and since that day I shrink like it’s a nervous habit. Like biting my nails except nothing like biting my nails. Or maybe it’s less like a nervous habit…

Sheets No. 1, Kory Gabriel     I. She is Becoming   something nocturnal. Watch as she teethes on moondark. She is going, gone.     II. I Hear   behind the treehouse: the coyote’s aria, touched by the moonlight.     III. I Told Her to Leave   but her hands were like night…

Roof Monks, Zoe Weingarten [Trigger Warning: Graphic Depictions of Violence; Domestic Violence] My oldest brother is named Levi, but he goes by “Tray” when he’s selling drugs. The alias occurred to him when he was high on meth and our brother Silas, in a similar state, put a cigarette out on his arm. Levi’s only response…

Afterparty 2, Mandi Vivacqua His nails weren’t coral but candy cane red cadillac and dark—satin lining of my mother’s purse, brains of a crushed watermelon or even the latex guts splashed over the rocks in Tremors after Kevin Bacon tricks the worm monster into falling off a cliff. I’d never seen a boy with nails like that…