She extended one arm towards me, then another. I allowed her ten limbs to encircle me, snake around my ribs, under my arms, between my clothed thighs. I got one glimpse of her pink, rubbery face before her hooked beak caught me. It clamped my mouth so hard I tasted
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Winner of the Sonora Review Issue 77 Fiction Contest, selected by Rebecca Makkai
According to Jan Krufka of Hard Facts Magazine, my studio apartment was
When I think of what I want your name to be, I
Once upon a time, when a flatbread made from jowar flour called the bhakri was an item of great value, when all your neighbours were distant or close relatives, when the king
Once upon a time there was a whale who no one understood. She swam up and down the Pacific, calling out in a pitch so high that other whales ignored her. Once
The carnival had flattened out like a tarp over the grounds outside the Montana town only that morning, so no one had seen her yet, kneeling next to Venus, spinning an empty
I got our mouse. In a glue-trap on the basement landing. I shined my cellphone and it tried to free itself by undulating like this dancer we saw on Make America Fun
Rylan won’t change the lightbulb in the living room. She won’t sit down to read, watch a movie or play scrabble there, and it’s all because of the heads. She doesn’t say
It’s 1982. She’s a junior in college, an English major, spending the spring academic quarter studying art and literature in England. The cuisine is awful: gloppy meat pies, mushy peas, Marmite, treacly-sweet
I knew it was time to leave Florida when the sinkhole ate Buddy. I was sitting in a kiddie pool with the hose running, throwing a mangled tennis ball for him to
I know girls sometimes do witchcraft. I’m at a pizza parlor two blocks down from my job. This is where I meet Margaret. I’m on my lunch break from driving warehouse forklifts.
I started calling my mother by her first name when I was 14. It was the day after my father deserted us. He left a message under a magnet on the refrigerator
No one bothered telling me that my father was picking me up, so when I saw him outside school, I worried someone was dead. “Why the fuck would anyone be dead?” he
