By John Thompson Guillén “How many times, say, in the last month have you felt like exploding?” asked Dr. Anjeline Charles.  “Many times,” I said.  She asked, “There’s not a specific number?”  “There’s not.”  “You mean there’s not a specific number, or you weren’t counting?”  “I wasn’t counting.”  Dr. Anjeline Charles shifted in her swivel…

By Maxwell Robinson I went back home for Christmas for about a month. You know, freshman year and all that, they wanted us out by the fifteenth or something so I packed up my shitty little Silvertone and a couple of books of poetry and got on the first Amtrak to Fort Worth Central. And…

By Maxwell Robinson Delta Dawn was on the radio and a whore was riding shotgun. In the contours of her face he could make out a dozen or so soft implications, a brow unfurrowed but tracing its own outline as if it were, lipstick on the corners of a mouth bleeding into reluctant grins, heavy…

By Maxwell Robinson My first move was to loop around to the side of the place. A little family-owned grocery store, a 24-hour one. The only one that was open this late. It was ideal prey. The clerks there wouldn’t give a shit. Not for eight bucks an hour, no; they’d just be sitting there,…

By Natalie Brink I knew my life in Sow’s Creek was over the moment Evangeline Helsing strutted into town. She arrived in a flurry only two days after the biggest snowstorm of the season, a strike of color against the gloomy landscape. It was especially cold that day, so the crunch of her footsteps echoed…

By Natalie Brink For the fourth time since Andi sat down, the front door to the diner swung open, the bellabove it ringing happily, and brought in new customers and a stinging wave of cold air. Shenuzzled down into her jacket. Maybe the next time her waiter came by, she would request to sit somewhere…

By Natalie Brink There is nothing on earth that simulates the same feeling of seeing a parent cry for thefirst time. My family had many things to cry about between my years of four and eight. In thecrushing weight of an absent patriarch bloomed my Mother. She was strong, beautiful,unforgiving, temperamental, and loving. She was…

By Adina Polatsek Content warnings: domestic abuse, mentions of the Holocaust I.  It was Yom Kippur night, which meant nothing. The rooftop was rough beneath her; she was cross-legged, hands flat on the scaffolding. The night sky was the weak black of closed eyelids, the trees rising out of the dark like the waters of…