Fiction

Graduation Day at New Castle Correctional. Hot and hopeful under the August sun, air crinkling above the highway. Except my very used Dodge Neon didn’t care for the heat, flatlining a few hundred yards from daycare. I glanced at Ryan, then coasted to the shoulder, gravel dinging the chassis. No way could I make it…

Aisha threw the first stone. The crowd of girls went silent as it arced through the humid twilight, striking the principal’s thick ankle. The hush lasted a few seconds more as we processed her gasp. Our principal did feel pain after all. Then Nonso whooped and let a second stone loose. “Stop!” Mrs. Haastrup shouted…

A Certain Kind of Gray (Rhinebeck, New York) At that point they were still trying to solve it by talking and so they went, together, to see a psychologist who worked out of an office in her house. It was a beautiful place off a dirt road. There were always men working in the yard….

Our friends, our very good friends, are getting a divorce. Julia and Sunny, lovable and loving, whom we’ve adored from the beginning, when we were all in medical school. The past few years have been difficult, we know that; we’ve known that for a while. It’s not news to us that there’ve been problems, some…

“Fran’s friend has cancer,” Sheila says. “Who?” “Fran’s friend. Has cancer.” “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” “I’m telling you. Fran’s friend.” Max looks up from his menu. “I’m hearing the words, Sheila. I’m asking who the hell is Fran?” “You don’t know who Fran is?” “I don’t know who Fran is.” “You don’t…

Somehow, Benzy hadn’t become a rabbi. He wished it were more complex than that, but it was not. He lived in his parents’ windowless basement in a Crown Heights brownstone that, if it did have windows, would have faced one of the biggest yeshivas in the neighborhood, which was basically a rabbi factory. Benzy had…

At the front desk, Mamoru tells the receptionist that they are married. “Yes, my wife prefers darker colors. She would like one that’s dark blue or indigo,” he says, selecting the yukata that they will wear to dinner. Sachiko can hear him from where she sits in the lobby. The inn, Oyako Koto no Yume,…

translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra Nina Hansen’s on her way home and it’s been a long day. While she was researching and writing, she almost didn’t notice that buzzing in her ear. Her left ear. When she’s idle and alone, it feels as if a bumblebee’s sitting in there, the kind you find…

This is the latching on. You are shelter and source, and this is the smell of only you. The hands that hold and lift and swaddle, the mouth that smiles and sings me, the eyes that look me into being: yours. This is the skin to skin. I cry to make the hungry stop and…