Tag: VIDA

You must choose. Once the baby makes its way out—and he will make his way out in a splash of fluid after the kind of crowning you won’t soon forget—the moments that make up your life will cease to be ones you choose. It is August. The trees wilt in ... Read More

It has been years since it happened. She is a still mother. Meaning, she keeps her body very still and she still considers herself a mother. She is rigid about this.... Nicole Miyashiro writes fiction and poetry and is an editor for the Pennsylvania Center for the Book at Penn State ... Read More

His friends were also there to see what might go wrong, and Ned was fine with that.... Nicole Miyashiro writes fiction and poetry and is an editor for the Pennsylvania Center for the Book at Penn State University. She has published stories, poems, and reviews, including one Pushcart Prize nominee. She ... Read More

He's a man of his word. A man whose mouth shrinks against his teeth when he smiles, as if recently stripped of a mature mustache, and who wears socks with clogs in the summertime to account for Florida air-conditioning.... Nicole Miyashiro has recent or forthcoming work in Clever Girl Magazine, Life in ... Read More

Later the painter, the other cook (who was off that day) and the waitress who had the evening shift, all lamented over coffee somewhere. They were thankful that they had not been there. Someone mentioned the body count. "Eight so far. Owner wasn't there...." Vimi Bajaj is a writer living ... Read More

She was ninety-three and had nineteen nine-inch diameter chocolate birthday cakes from Bill Knapp's restaurant in her basement freezer. How could she say no? They were a free gift, no coupon necessary. Each cake came with a sixteen-year-old waitress smiling straight rows of braces; with a balding manager clapping chapped ... Read More

What captures your interest most in your work, now, as a reader? I’m interested in lyrical flow and urgency, and savor moments when all other story elements blend to elevate these two and keep the story moving. What are you working on now? Right now I’m working on a collection ... Read More

Jesse shuts his eyes to the hotel room’s stark white décor. Imagines he is in a French bordello. Thick velvet drapes framing the window. A soft canopy above the bed. Brass table lamps with beaded shades. He leans back on his elbows, kicks off his sneakers. He likes a good ... Read More

The red velvet curtain rises. Music plays, a piece heavy with woodwinds, flittering flutes set off by the depth of oboes and clarinets. The lights above the aquarium shoot rays of violet and neon pink through the water. The smell of chlorine is strong, but it doesn’t bother the boy; ... Read More

When the dolphin appears in Ava Long's swimming pool, she thinks at first it is a shadow, the gray outline of a zeppelin circling above her house. Then, the gray sliver flicks its tail and dives to the bottom of the amoeba-shaped pool, and Ava thinks the neighborhood kids are ... Read More

The kickback at the Carmichaels' was not Riley's idea. It was Liz's, of course, part of her obsession with losing her virginity to Frank Marshall. A little over a year ago, Frank had been a skinny drama nerd in ill-fitting polo shirts with an unrequited crush on Liz. AIDS, Liz ... Read More

Before the locals knew Isaiah to be a man of good faith, he first became popular for being the man who collected the rainwater in large tin tubs which he placed all over his property. These tin basins were shiny silver, favoring summer solstice cauldrons. It would look like the ... Read More

Tonight, Sarah didn’t want to get drunk with her parents. There had been too many nights of the same thing, and instead of finding comfort in the routine, it only made her feel increasingly worse about what had happened. Her parents had started drinking early and were too lost in ... Read More

He could stay in the car a few more minutes, or even make a few rounds in the neighborhood, perhaps stop by the grocery store or hardware store and get something; they always need something. Instead, he shuts the car door behind him, the slam echoing. Inside, the air smells of Parmesan ... Read More

Goose bumps are taboo; her skin must be smooth and even. Last summer, he cracked open the windows for a breeze and let two fans chase away the heat.... Claire Polders is a Dutch author of four novels with a debut in English on the way. Her short prose appeared ... Read More

You can’t remember the name of the guy sitting to your left, but you’re pretty sure the girl in the back is Jenny. When you told them about the boat and that the rest of the trip consisted of someone else’s directions, they assumed that someone else would be here ... Read More

When she last slept, she dreamt of a great lizard taking shape from the side of a building, a dinosaur that started out as a mural but which roared to life from the brick facade. Or did dinosaurs hiss? The poor monster couldn’t sleep either, she supposed.... Cezarija Abartis' Nice Girls ... Read More

Pretend you’re on a dating show not because you want to be (unless you’ll get a book deal, that happens sometimes) but for ulterior motives, say as a government spy or as a budding sociologist with a thesis deadline. Argue with your not-too-gruff-to-cry spy boss or with your stern-but-hip professor ... Read More

Granny Clery blamed my lack of the family eyes on my Italian father and Hazel's on her wicked spirit. But neither of us, not a one, ever fit in since..... Kristie Smeltzer's writing has appeared in So to Speak, The Florida Review, Eclectica Magazine, and The Apeiron Review. Her story,  "Bridges,"  was a ... Read More

...If my Dad knew that I was crossing the picket lines – and for Pittston, those bastards, he would lose his mind, he would. Lose it. He would be screaming about Buffalo Creek in ‘72 from back when I was just a kid and how he’d survived that only to ... Read More

Happiness is a simple thing, you said. Happiness is a cool shadow and you looking at me. But we don’t have cool shadows in Trun. In summer there is no grass like the grass you see in your picture books. The dust is knee-deep and it is so hot your ... Read More

There was a town overrun by rats. They spoiled everything. They stuck their tales in the butter and shit in the soup and committed date rapes, but the girls imagined it was a mark of prestige to be chosen, so they said nothing.... S. Graber is an Assistant Professor of ... Read More

Lynn turned the pages of Tehran Daily as she sat behind the counter at Hafiz Hotel. Day after day, for a year now, she had been waiting for the news about the arrest of the person who put the bomb in the station wagon her husband was driving. What had ... Read More

Maribel tried to picture her parents' graves. As a child, she had the notion that if you imagined something hard enough it was like actually doing the thing you'd imagined. She saw how the frosted grass sat as stiff as on the back of an old man's neck. She saw ... Read More

At your birth, a carefully chosen playlist gives you a lifelong love of The Smiths and a preternatural nervousness toward The Beastie Boys. In anticipation, your family struggles with your slick limbs. Their tension will make you persistently suspect something's amiss, like you've left your phone on the L or ... Read More

This killer whale broke surface twelve feet out, arching its oily mass out from the water, and then it dove, aimed in our direction. One of us grabbed the shotgun. Our catch was good, but orcas could eat our salmon right through the nets, swarm us in packs of up ... Read More

TUESDAY’S GONE  The elevator appeared and I joined Flip Furlong, tall, thin, in blue scrubs. We each gave a nod of acknowledgment then I glanced at the panel; it was already pressed for floor nine. I reached in my purse for my phone, but could feel Flip still looking at ... Read More

The first thing we say to Baby is we’ll always love her, but then we amend the statement. We’ll always love her with the following caveat: she can’t be a sadist. Her eyes loll around like she’s tripping. Her feet clench, unclench, clench again.... Cady Vishniac is a fiction MFA ... Read More

Kaitlin O’Brien recently received her B.A. in English Literature with a concentration in Creative Writing from Longwood University in Virginia. A Central Virginia native, she draws much of her writing inspiration from the small-town drama of her immediate world. She loves to go places she's never seen, she obsesses over olfactory and taste memory, ... Read More

Finally, it was summer. Soon Brie would spend afternoons behind the counter at her father’s bike rental business, signing out beach cruisers to tourists whose expensive cologne stuck to the twenties they peeled from their billfolds. For now, though, the tedium of algebra was past, and so too the excruciating ... Read More

I had a capital-v “Vision” while masturbating. We all do from time to time, am I right? We all think we’re Jesus Christ ‘til the spooj hits. And then we’re hurled back down to earth, flat and round and dry. But this one was such a strange saga, I had ... Read More

It’s January but it’s still hot and sticky. Florida is like that. Some people like it, but Misty can’t stand it. She is sitting on the swing set and the plastic is burning her thighs. A lot of the parents and kids at the playground are giving her dirty looks, ... Read More

Eda Gunaydin is a student of Spanish & Latin American and English language in Sydney, although currently residing in Madrid in pursuit of difficulty and trilingualism. She tries to live at the nexus between science fiction & anti-bigotry. As she transitions awkwardly from adolescence into adulthood, her work can be ... Read More