Fiction

It hides from me deep below. Amidst bubbles and foam, a skull of gills and scales and spine stashes away under waves of blue. Do we share the same creases beneath our eyes, the ones that feel like gashes in the mornings? Is salt buried above its cheeks? When it swims and breathes does it choke like me, now? Like me, before? And when it cries and screams does the ocean swallow it all up, too?

In Mar. 2025 (Issue 150)

Fiction

sharp house

by Samir Sirk Morató

Little is more crushing than the idea that no matter what you do, you are only capable of destruction, and everyone knows it. I wanted to weave that fear into this story, and to push tenderness and violence up against each other. How can we understand one without understanding the other?

In Mar. 2025 (Issue 150)

Fiction

The Tugwort

by Lincoln Michel

Author spotlight

They went to the island not to save the marriage—for the marriage hadn’t yet occurred—but to save the possibility of the marriage. It’d been a rough year, Carla knew. The details were banal. Stress at work and stress at home. The economy collapsing. The political system collapsing. The planet burning. Despite all this, when her fiancé, Anton, proposed a vacation, she balked.

In Mar. 2025 (Issue 150)

Fiction

In Our Skin

by Kelsea Yu

Author spotlight

Mother’s blade slides into the soft skin at the nape of my neck, sharp and eager. She doesn’t falter the way she does when it’s Maddy’s turn. No cooing or crying. No reassurances as she slices through the spot where—no matter how brief a time Mother lets me stay Awake—my skin fuses to our underbody.

In Feb. 2025 (Issue 149)

Fiction

The Sound a Rabbit Might Make

by Bruce McAllister

Inspiration: A relationship—everything but the drill.

In Feb. 2025 (Issue 149)

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Fiction

God of the Black Moon

by Dan Stintzi

Author spotlight

Sam met Haley at a house party in the suburbs where everyone hung out in the basement, smoking inside and listening to a band called Belladonna play songs that lasted seven minutes. Sam was drunk and high on psychedelic mushrooms. To him, the basement had the quality of a bomb shelter; the world outside had been turned to ash. He didn’t mind this idea.

In Feb. 2025 (Issue 149)

Fiction

Karabasan

by Leyla Hamedi

Author spotlight

Today his family comes to formally ask my parents—my father—for my hand. They will sit in our front room, the best room, and make small talk as his mother eyes me up and down. Her razor eyes will take in every detail and turn them into flaws and my mother will silently accept her disapproval by not saying a word.

In Jan. 2025 (Issue 148)

Fiction

They Bought a House

by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

The idea for this story began in my final week at the Clarion Writers Workshop. I wanted to write a haunted house horror story using stripped language, but unsurprisingly, it became strange and detailed and maximalist. It’s the perfect piece to summarize my time at Clarion, as it was collectively inspired by all the great stories I read over the summer of 2023.

In Jan. 2025 (Issue 148)

Fiction

The Morning Room

by Katharine Tyndall

Author spotlight

In the morning room everything is bright and clean, florals and pastels. My wife says it looks tacky and childish, but after some pleading, she agrees not to touch the decorations. The faint lavender-colored walls I hang with dried pressed flowers in clear-plastic frames. The couch is the most expensive thing I ever bought.

In Jan. 2025 (Issue 148)

Fiction

Before and After

by Steve Rasnic Tem

Author spotlight

Some days I felt close to that line where awareness ends. Beyond that border I would become someone else’s memory. I knew eventually even that erratic existence would fade. I knew you went through this, and I wondered what you saw and what you felt, lying there with your eyes closed.

In Dec. 2024 (Issue 147)