The Collection by Myna Chang
A shudder rakes me; it rises up from my soul, shaking this borrowed body like a fever dream. I press ahead, despite my fear. The Collector is coming for me. The throng roils on the platform below, hellbent on the open train doors. A giant digital clock in the center…
First Blot by Juliette van der Molen
two treaties1,two sides,three deeds & signatures forthem all, allowedby the future queen-dauphin,everyone’s docile little paragon. in the beginning, it is loveand light and never the possibilitythat anything could turn dark,here in the glittering courtof my adoptive country. how is it you say there isa blot, the first blot(of many) on my…
World Building by Lucy Whitehead
If years from now archaeologists excavate our life togetherthey’ll uncover a entire culture, a civilisation.They’ll create a typology of our artifacts, the forks and kniveswe selected that year we moved into our third flat,the curve of them, the weight, the quality. They’ll reconstruct the chronology of our mugcollection, understand the stratigraphy…
The Wayfarer by V.C. McCabe
The fence had been there ever since Billy could remember. Ugly, gnarled brown wood tightly banded together with vicious curls of barb wire like a crown of thorns on top. The fence stood as tall as a full-grown man and ran the length of the boundary between his family’s property…
The Little People or Reflections on Driving Past Murdock McInnis by J.S. MacLean
When we drove past that farmMomma would always say that her Auntie would always saythat those little hillswere the kind of hillswhere the Little People liked to stay. I’d ask if anyone ever said they saw themand she would say“no, but the Old People believedthat they were good luck even ifthey liked mischief.” …
Aunt Arran by Lia Robles
It is dark and red outside. Dark and red like the night our parents were killed. We sit together, bundled close against a rock outcropping, a few feet from the train track, a few feet from where we had been left. The train station that isn’t. Just a stop, really.…
Mineral Bouquet by Lindz McLeod
All hail the true one, as the true one hails us. May the society be pleased to receive the enclosed selection of notes from one Dr Smiley, ‘ae Greate Lovere Of Winnes’, as presented from her diaries. As we all know, diary-keeping was, in the early years of the Ascendance.…
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward John Ford by Daniel Ellis
From the trunk of his rented Citroën the coward John Ford drew his Panaflex camera, his beret, and his clapperboard. He would need all of that apparatus here, in the Uffizi, on the trail of Jesse James. Outside, Ford appreciated the Romanesque grandeur of the place, but it was not the…
They Did Not Know by Kristin Garth
In cheval mirror you will stare, pilfered brush, poised in mid-air, like serrated blade a stranger proffered late last night — silver lessons against your rib cage, light. Made a dimming map — organs, veins — bloodlettingexplained, damp skin, arterial spray,how deep daggers descend in denouementof tragedy. Close your eyes, not to pray, see skeletons resembling…
Josef Mengele Song by John Wall Barger
Every night we are afraidwe shut our eyeswe reveal ourselves to the night & to our blanketsas the dwarves of Auschwitz were revealed to Josef Mengele.They took us from the orphanage in a dump truckbacked up to a fire pit,we tumbled out,Josef Mengele & the SS officers burst out of the foreston motorcycles circling the flames.To each other…
Take Us On A Journey To Somewhen
