JUST AFTER JOY — MOLIA DUMBLETON

In her hometown, when Melody was thirteen, a nineteen-year-old flipped his Trans Am on the highway feeder road right outside the main entrance to the mall where Melody used to get dropped off to meet her friends at the food court outside the cinema multiplex, and the next day The City News printed a picture of the upside-down car on the front page, which is where Melody saw it in black and white: the car fully upside-down and teetering on its crumpled hood.
             There wasn’t any blood or anything, that’s hard to tell in black and white, so Melody looked extra hard just to be sure, but the story was that the boy had been speeding—really speeding, not just a little-bit speeding the way your parents might if they were late for something—and tried to take that turn too tight, and so over it went, the Trans Am, all three thousand pounds of it—with both its windows wide open, it being August, and the song, My Hometown, blaring from the radio as the car sat there rocking, upside-down with a dead boy inside of it.
             Melody felt every inch of that story in her bones every time she passed that spot in the car with her parents for weeks afterward, even as the little pieces of glass and metal on the road gradually spread out and disappeared—and later, too, when she was learning to drive—and as an adult, any time she took a turn too tight—and even after that, too—for the rest of her life, really, whenever she almost started to get that feeling that you feel, that forever sort of soaring feeling, when it’s August and late, and you’re free.

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Molia Dumbleton's debut collection of short fiction was a Finalist for the 2018 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Individual stories from that collection have appeared in The Kenyon Review, New England Review, Witness, SmokeLong Quarterly, Columbia Journal, and others. Her work has also been awarded the Columbia Journal Fiction Award, Seán Ó Faoláin Story Prize, Dromineer Literary Festival Flash Fiction Award; Kelly Barnhill Microfiction Award; Third Prize for the Bridport Prize; Third Prize for the Bath Flash Fiction Award; and a spot as a Finalist in the SmokeLong Quarterly Flash Fiction Award and Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Award, among others. She is a reader for The Masters Review and a member of the Curatorial Board at Ragdale. Full publications list and other info can be found at www.moliadumbleton.com. 

ON MY TOOTHBRUSH THERE IS ACETONE — JENNY FRIED

There is a wolf in my city who wears padlocks in her ears. Her fur is long and it falls and whorls in gray sputters of dying ink. There is a wolf in my city and I have seen her in the walls of my apartment.
             The wolf in my city eats dumpster lettuce and pigeon popcorn. She holds them in her mouth but I have never seen her chew. Her teeth are chipped and black and sometimes when I go to sleep I can feel them in my stomach. She watches me while I shave my face and my chest and paint my nails. I sometimes think that she is jealous.
             There is a wolf in my city, a wolf, and she lives in the sidewalk cracks that I do not step on. She lives in the flickers in the streetlights and in the cabs of sleeping cranes. I left my razor out for her one night, in the space between the wall and my refrigerator, but in the morning it had gained only a drop of blood. I checked for gray hairs everywhere I could think of, but I only found one. The lonely red drop was too sad to look at, and I went to work that day with stubble.
             There is a wolf in my city with a scratch on her nose and a belly of fall leaves. In the winter her fur is full of roadkill. There are men who whistle at me while their cars are stopped in traffic. I look at the wolf through the cracks in the sidewalk and when I get home I paint my teeth black.
             I wrote faggot on my chest once, a secret punishment for the skirt that slept under my bed, for the smooth skin and paper-cut mouths built from the slipping of my fingers.It bled through my shirt, a charcoal rubbing on a gravestone. I can taste it now as I spit out flecks of black nail polish. I rinse my mouth and try hard not to swallow.
             “There is a wolf,” I say, and I grip my toothbrush tighter. “There is a wolf there is a wolf there is a wolf.”

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Jenny Fried is a trans author living in California. Her work has appeared previously or is forthcoming in Bad Nudes, Jellyfish Review, X-R-A-Y, and The New York Times. Find her on twitter @jenny_fried.

THE SOUND OF HER VOICE — VERONICA MONTES

It happens when she speaks. Her husband’s face disassembles itself, and the pieces do not slide back into their proper slots until she stops making sounds. Sometimes she forgets and a single word escapes her—a word like “no” or “when”—and her husband’s left eye migrates to the right side of his forehead for a moment. She cannot bear to see him out of sorts in this way.

It’s her fault. Her side of the conversation was always filled with pauses because she could never seem to find the right words, and so she would backtrack to the beginning and come at it in a different way, a way she felt might be better, or might better express, maybe, the point she way trying to make. Her husband once mentioned that he didn’t like this, that her tendency to speak in spirals was maddening. You’re driving me fucking nuts, he said.

She makes use of gestures now. There is a whole language, after all, that incorporates fingerspelling and body motion. She’s consulted a website that claims this language can improve relationships. Also—did you know this?—gestures are an effective way to speak with babies who don’t yet vocalize. She keeps this in mind for the future.

Maybe she’ll take a class in this language. For now, though, she wings it (holds arms out to the side, tilts body to the left, then the right). Near dinnertime she raises both hands, fingers spread, so that her husband knows his meal will be ready in ten minutes. Later, when he’s settled onto the couch to watch television, she cups her hand around her ear to ask if he’d like the volume turned up. Sometimes a raised eyebrow is enough to telegraph her message, and she’s found that there are many different ways to nod even though they all mean yes. He seems grateful for this silence; he sighs as if content.

In bed tonight she places her cheek over her husband’s heart to indicate that she’d welcome intimacy. She’s surprised to find that his heartbeat feels like a tiny punch, punch, punch against her face. It makes her laugh. Afterwards there is a rustling outside the window, and she knows that it’s the two deer who come to feed off the apple tree at midnight.

Can you hear— she begins.

He strokes her hair. He places his hand over her mouth. Shhhh, he says. Shhhh.

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Veronica Montes is the author of Benedicta Takes Wing & Other Stories (Philippine American Literary House, 2018). Her online fiction can be found at SmokeLong Quarterly, Spelk, and Lakas Zine. She is the Managing Fiction Editor at daCunha.global.

THE MURDEROUS HISTORY OF TUMBLEWEEDS — DAVID DRURY

I remember when tumbleweeds were new. Not new altogether, but made new, to borrow from the parlance of religion. New in the way we know them now. New after what they had been for so so so so so long.
             They were not always autonomous golden wheels sheared from the ground, you see, jogged with whispers and ambition, rainbow bouncing down the lone highway. They were not always itinerant honeycomb fingerprints sprung from purgatory, pinwheeling to Gloryland. They were not always fit for cowboy films.
             They were once collectives. Conglomerates. Bits of stick and stem and leaf and heather. Scraps of chaff and gristle, fir and feather, and fur and leather and wet hair tangled together. Morsels of bone and vein and flattened lizard heads. Clusters of proud scowling cracked beaks. Shreds of nightgown and knuckle scabs and the soles of tiny shoes, swollen with blood, soaked in booze. They moved with dark intent, accumulating, amassing, stockpiling. They did not rest.
             We called them Tumbleheaps. They grew to incredible size, some large as mountains. It took a much stronger wind to carry them along, but there was plenty of wind back then. Parents who turned away for even a moment learned by way of grief. Children playing near roadways were—now and then—crushed to death by a passing behemoth, which would not only flatten, but snatch the body whole up into itself and continue rolling on its way. Born of death, seeking death, ever collecting. Funerals had to be performed on horseback.
             When the ten million years of winds died down, Tumbleheaps began falling over. They fell over, and they evolved. They ceased to be the same once they lost their murderous heart for collecting.
             Even after the heaps by some kind of time-spun miracle became pardoned in their being and transformed into the emancipated spirits we now know as tumbleweeds, it was not enough. It was not enough for me to believe in a universal goodness. It was not enough for me to hope. I was in a very low place for a very long time. But I have to say, as of the last hundred years, what I’ve seen happening with bird nests—the structural changes; the migration to ever higher branches; the hints of some marvel yet to come—turns my bleak heart into the hint of a smile every time I hear church bells cutting through a breeze.

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David Drury lives in Seattle, Washington. His fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio, published in Best American Nonrequired Reading and is forthcoming in ZYZZYVA. He has a Masters degree in Christian Studies from Regent College (University of British Columbia) and been kicked out of every casino in Las Vegas.

MEN'S SECRETS — LEONORA DESAR

It happened when I was fifteen. All of a sudden I was hot. It came out of nowhere. One minute I was invisible and the next boys were feeling me up behind the stairs. They always say, don’t let strangers touch you, but they weren’t strangers. They were sophomores. Their names were Alan, Billy, Steve. They wore braces. Mullets. They said, let’s get this party started. After awhile they said nothing. They just did a little thing, like their legs were walking, which was code, for stairwell. We went. Usually there was a lot of tongue involved. Then the hands would start. They went up the shirt. Down the shirt. They paused at the pants and then they went there, too. They hung out. They said, hello, like we are giving you the pleasure of your life. It always stopped there, strangely. It’s like they read a book up to a certain point, and then Mom came in. After that things were formal. We sat there like nuns, or teachers. It was all very chivalrous, really. He would hold the door for me and we would go into whatever happened next, chemistry class, maybe, or the yard. Then he would ignore me and I would ignore him, or pretend to, I did what my dad does, I’d say, time does not exist except for at this moment. I looked around and murdered time. Then I took the bus.
             By 11th grade we just looked at each other. It was like a formality, like a favorite TV show you can’t give up, even though it’s in the 7th season and all the main characters have died. It was as if he’d forgotten how to feel. He was lost. He was thinking about algebra or how our teacher looked like Humpty Dumpty. It interfered with things, like sex. He put his hand over my blouse and we just sat there. And in the end he gave me this look, like don’t tell Steve or Billy. I nodded. It would be our secret. It was a bond. I told myself this. It smelled like M&M’s and menthols, like x=y2. He was the x and I the y, or he the y, it didn’t matter—we equaled out. My mother looked at me. She said, there’s something different about you, and I nodded. I was a woman now. I knew how to keep men’s secrets.

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Leonora Desar’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in CHEAP POP, River Styx, Passages North, Black Warrior Review Online, Mid-American Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, and Quarter After Eight, among others. She won third place in River Styx’s microfiction contest, and was a runner-up/finalist in Quarter After Eight’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose contest, judged by Stuart Dybek. She was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions 2019, and Best Microfiction 2018.

AXL ACCOMPANIES SLASH TO A LAKERS GAME — AMORAK HUEY & W. TODD KANEKO

It’s already late in the history of our togetherness, we both know this, have always known this—the ending of a thing inherent in its beginning, birth and death harmonizing from the start.

The ball goes up. Men’s bodies collide. We are here to be seen. We were told it was a good idea by someone we pay to keep score. Points for this side, points for the other, all lights and noise and keep the beers coming. This is fun. This is fun. They keep reminding us.

Later we will stick needles in each other’s veins. 

Later we will record our last song together.

Later we will say cacophony. We will say nothing is wrong. One day I will wake up and realize I have never seen your eyes. You claim to be rooting for both teams. We sit so close to the sweat. The desire. 

These men are trying so hard.

Everyone thinks he’s going to win / of course that’s impossible.

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Amorak Huey, a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, is author of the poetry collections Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015) and Boom Box (Sundress, forthcoming 2019), as well as two chapbooks. He is co-author of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and teaches at Grand Valley State University.

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor 2014), co-author of Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2018), and his poems and prose can be seen in many journals and anthologies. A Kundiman fellow, he is co-editor of the online literary journal Waxwing and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University.

THE REAL NAME — VERONICA KLASH

(Content Warning: Sexual Assault)

The vampire squid was the scariest thing we’d ever seen. It glided along nonchalantly, and then once threatened, it flipped inside out to expose chains of teeth. When the image flashed on the screen, your hand found mine. I gave it a little squeeze to say I know.

After that, we had to learn more. We decided the library would be the best place because the vampire squid deserved real research, not two seconds on a keyboard. The one on 67th Street has those circular gothic windows that look like something out of a Jules Verne story. Everything fit.

We found out that, even though it’s called a “squid”, it’s really an octopus. I found out that your lips are softer than they look, and that—even though you ran to meet me—you still smelled like a forest after the rain. Musky, clean, and fresh.

School started up again and you forgot all about the octopus with the big blue eyes jutting out from a red body. You never brought it up again. Not when we went for ice-cream. Not when you came over to my house for dinner. Not when we kissed, against a tree, amber leaves crunching under our feet.

But I didn’t forget. I thought about the two toothy beaks it hides under its webbing. How what looked like strands of teeth was really spongy, not sharp. Protection by deception. I thought it was so clever, animals not as they appear.

Then you came over one night, my parents were out. The heaviness of your body on mine left no air in my lungs.

I said I wasn’t ready.

But you didn’t stop. You pretended not to see my tears. Vampyroteuthis infernalis. That’s the squid’s real name. Why can’t things be as they appear?

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Veronica Klash loves living in Las Vegas and writing in her living room. She writes flash fiction, short stories, articles, and essays. When she’s not writing, Veronica indulges in her other obsessions: food, martinis, Japan, and goofy socks. Find her at veronicaklash.com.

STILL LIFE WITH PRAIRIE, 1860 — NATALIE TEAL McALLISTER

Line the little crosses outside Mother’s window so she can see them. Little boys wander. Little boys play soldiers. Little boys play Indians. Tuck their little bodies into the earth where Mother can watch them grow.
             Father makes the boxes and Mother makes the burial gowns. Ruby watches her mother dress the little baby boys and cradle them and they are almost real, more real than Ruby or the sunflowers or the sky. Mother pulls them into her chest and smiles while she rocks them. They belong to the crook of her arm.
             Would Ruby like to hold the baby?
             Father pulls Ruby back with his too-large hands. Little baby boys make no sounds. Little baby boys won’t be warm. Little baby boys blue like the sky above.
             Father lets Mother keep each boy until the sun sets.
             At dusk Father cleaves the boys from Mother’s arms. Into the box. Into the belly of the earth. Sky above turned turquoise and fuchsia.
             Summer, harvest, pin oak leaves and frost. Six is arriving. Father plunges the shovel while Mother screams. His boys are made for earth, his only girl made to bear the weight of them.
             Would Ruby like to hold the baby?
             Yes, yes, mama I want to hold the baby.
             Pull the baby in close. Hold the head in the nook of her arm. Arms as stiff as her baby doll. Legs as stiff as her baby doll. Tilt him forward. Open, eyes, open.
             The hills curl around them. Father makes the box and Mother makes the burial gown. Ruby rocks the baby and rocks the baby and rocks the baby. Father cleaves the boy from her arms.
             Snow, frozen earth, cracks in the hard clay. Father packs his rifle. Father packs his boots. Fire floats along the border. Boys ride horses to the flames. Boys belong to causes. Boys belong to armies.
             Thaw, charred timber, mud sucks at their boots. The boys return in boxes.
             Mother knows the price of boys and when their house burns Mother will teach Ruby how to build it again and build it stronger.
             Ruby lets coneflowers grow along the little crosses. Purple as the sky. Little girls be brave, brave as your mother. Little boys be meant for the earth, let your blood water the prairie and come alive again in the red of sunset.

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Natalie Teal McAllister writes stories about dirt: the dirt under our fingernails, those stories from our childhood we can't escape, the land we came from that still lives in the enamel of our teeth. Her flash fiction appears in Longleaf Review and Pigeon Pages, and her short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, No Tokens, Midwestern Gothic, and Flyway, among others. She is a 2017 and 2018 Tin House Summer Workshop participant and a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Kansas.