Her Singing Horses Photo By Nati Melnychuk My big sister’s horses are mostly dead horses. …………Once, her horses were talented horses; once, her horses were singing horses; once, people said …………my big sister’s horses had the most gorgeous young voices they’d heard. Everyone said …………she had show-stopping horses. Everyone said her horses were stars. […]
Self-Storage Photo By Joel Swick [The Bowl that Fills] I can’t conjure my own first memory, but I do remember Virginia Woolf’s. She was in the nursery at St. Ives in the Hebrides. The acorn on the end of the string from a window blind slid back and forth across the floor with the […]
A Most Generous Offer Photo by Carsten Ullrich i. The apartment in Beijing was Lin’s and mine until Ma made the generous decision of allowing old Mrs. Yang to move in. My sister and I spent our summers there. Lin liked to trample through the weeds caulking the patches around the apartment building, gathering […]
Great Plains Photo By el-toro I would wake up hollowed of home, like the womb-loving part of me had cracked itself open: a mockingbird egg sluiced across the new morning. I would leave bed to tear parcels out the floorboard, pour thick red soil and seed lupines, watch them sink blue teeth into the […]
What Lot’s Wife Said Photograph by Daria Volkova New Year’s Eve, 2020 turn back and you’ll turn to salt— there is only ash and the lick of flame along your hip the body’s a pillar in darkness, skin white as a moon and a crescent of bone like the arc of a bow pulled taut […]
When They Come for You Photo by Thomas Millot Police came through with a loudspeaker and said everyone needed to be out by 9 a.m., or else face arrest. [This despite] a ruling by the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that was effectively sustained by the US Supreme Court in December declar[ing] that […]
Parable Photo by Enguerrand Blanchy One summer, two kookaburras mated on a power line, extinguishing light in a thousand homes. Stories say the female opened her wings and touched two wires. Closing the circuit. Making, of her body, a conductor. And his, attached to hers. Witnesses gaped at brilliant flashes, cacophony like drums. The birds, […]
Rhinoceros Ridge Photo by Nacho Domínguez Argenta “You remind me of my brother,” I tell Ricky. We’re making out on the grass behind the cellar. Rocks dig beds into my knees, stationed on either side of Ricky’s ips. Far away, but not far enough, I hear the stray dogs howl. “Don’t be gross,” he says, […]
Photograph by Edwin Chen When and why did I first start doing all in my power to avoid being inside an elevator? Maybe things felt overcrowded in the womb, with my twin in there too, or I got into a tight spot as a toddler and people took a while to notice. In my grander […]
On Seeing a Phasma Gigas Photo by Michael Eisen 1 In adamant clarity, in an acrylic cube, the one called phasma or ghost, difficult to see on its native bark, compels and says I am, repels and says I am. Which camouflage is which? Stunned by extravagant repugnance, by alien symmetry, I study its mottled […]