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  I was slapping at the welts on my shins one green evening when you told me to suck on the head of a match. Sulfur, you said, would get in my blood and keep the mosquitoes away. One match a month was all it took, you told me. I went back to catching fireflies. [...]

A strongman is lifting my car, his hands bolted tight to the front bumper. His trunky thighs and buttocks are facing streetward, and several women in the neighborhood have set up lawn chairs and are watching the spectacle from their front yards. His grunts are loud, like falling timber, and the birds perched on the roof have fled in search of friendlier shingles.

Weather grows from underground. Great storms explode, often from just below he soil, where they lie, begging to be let loose by a spade. When lightning strikes it’s like visiting a birthplace, digging to that brown pile of soil from which it sprung, to hide and be bright down there, amid the clouds below the soil. Sunburnt grandmothers knew this, and hated when their headstrong husbands went out to tend the gardens, unafraid of what weather they might unearth.

Salt wind had peeled the green, blue, and yellow paint from the Ferris wheel gondola that swept Joel and his family up into the night, sweetly launched them toward the evening star.

When I talked back, my father used to make me stand in the front yard holding milk jugs.

The wholesale casket warehouse is chilled with dry dust, and I look at Grandmother to make sure she’s serious. “With haste, missy,” she says. “Get in, I haven’t got all day. Just ask my doctors.”

The honey bee licks her forelegs and combs the pollen from her head. She stretches down the length of her thorax. What was once taut and hirsute now resembles the plundered stamen of a speedwell. She has been lost for six days. Her wings ache; an abnormal spasm pinches her bowels. She can hardly clock [...]

We set out in the middle of the night and arrived at the station by daybreak.

No one knew quite what to do when they found the blonde-haired monkey with the thin golden face that looked like a byzantine saint. Large eyes – positioned close together in a flat profile resembling that of a painted idol – and a serious mouth set it apart from any image of a monkey the [...]

It is time again to call my mother. I call her every day at noon. When she picks up today, she sounds great. A little winded, but energized. I can hear her treadmill whirring, her sneakered feet lightly thumping. “Where are you?” I ask. “Just passing over the Himalayas,” she says. “They’re lovely. They look [...]

Wherever the cola bottles are, you’ll find me.

So, if Rome were a senior in college, Rome would look like this: Rome has a swimmer’s body—a tight smoothness. He doesn’t shave his chest, just has that God-given sculptured body, that “I take care of myself but not in a grossly exaggerated, body-builder way.” And of course, Rome is a swimmer. He would never [...]

Arthur Bradford is an O Henry Award winning writer and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. His writing has appeared inEsquire, McSweeney’s, Vice, Men’s Journal, and many other publications. His first book, Dogwalker, was published by Knopf and Vintage paperback in 2002, and has been translated into ten languages.  His latest book, Benny’s Brigade, is a children’s book, published by McSweeney’s in 2012.

My ex started seeing the sheriff and pretty soon I’m getting pulled over every time I back out of my driveway. He says the phone calls need to stop, but what should I do? I haven’t seen my boys in a dick year and it’s making me ill to think of how tall they’re getting [...]

The girl comes home from the zoo and removes the books, one by one, from the folding card table that serves as her father’s desk.  She then turns it over, legs in the air, and sits on it.  No one notices at first.  Her sister does, but doesn’t say anything, such is their relationship; such [...]

The three-years-running champion of the Hemingway look-alike contest moves like a broken-nosed boxer, big and graceful in his size-thirteen penny-loafers.  He’s 45-years older than I am, but we have a lot in common.  We both drink like someday our livers are going to forgive us.  We tell bad jokes punctuated by hitting each other hard [...]

She kept a simple box at the bottom of a large chest, at the foot of her bed, where she stored her linens and spare blankets. In the evenings she opened the chest and pushed aside the unused bedspreads, the heavy cloth exhaling stale lavender. She took out the box and opened it with care. [...]

The first time Sandy saw the bear, in her panic she let him inside. She and Henry were in the cabin, about to go for a walk in the woods. Standing by the cabin door, hand on the doorknob, Sandy was queerily reminded of a horror film. “If this were a movie,” she said, “we’d [...]

Julia Slavin is the author of The Woman Who Cut Off Her Leg At the Maidstone Club and Other Stories and Carnivore Diet.

“I do not belong here! I miss the sea!”

His baby daughter had slept so much, as all do, and when she was awake, it seemed as though she could see.

She’s here because Troy has not, would not, be so stupid as to say he is in love with her.

Returned to Korea, the land that belonged once to you, owned you, lost you.

He ran until his knees sang and his ankles drooped into rainbows.