Fiction

Killinger’s farm is gone. Only the silo’s headhouse remains above water.   The Atlantic refuses to rescind. Hurricanes in February. Killinger can climb no higher in the silo, but the water will. A community formed on Katahdin – the rescue boats begged him. The water will lower. He stayed. The makeshift living space atop the silo had …

“She’s a beaut, ain’t she?”  Evette knew the old nurse didn’t expect a response, but she nodded dutifully, readjusting her hand underneath the curls tickling her palm. The infant’s puckered mouth latched at her breast. Sooty, round eyes looked straight up at hers. How could Evette not get lost in them? They didn’t loll around …

Winner of the 2025 Tobias Wolff Fiction Award In the car, Chicken’s head thumps against the window every time the screws rattle, which is always. So it sounds like krrrCHrattle thHumpB and then the spitting of the car’s exhaust. It’s an old beast. It hurts to lay her head against the car’s window, but Chicken’s already committed to the act. She will keep her head here …

1.Grandpa Timothy, my mother’s father, smells like old newspapers, wears a tweed jacket no matter the weather. At family gatherings, I join the line of cousins waiting to dance with our grandfather, life of the party. Famous for slipping money into our young palms so our mothers don’t take it from us under the guise …

My boyfriend wrapped my favorite collar around my neck helping me feel complete in the soft, faded leather nearly choking me, but with the two finger rule we knew how to play safely, so it felt more like a hug than a strangle, though at times I didn’t mind the feeling of tightness around my …

I was in a pet store buying cat litter when I learned Tay was gone. Several people were buying cat litter that evening. Also, cat food and dog food, and there may have been food of other kinds in some hands—bird, rabbit, hamster, fish—as well as the inedible things we buy to sustain the health …

Devin walks his Chow Chow, Milly, among the half-dozen spruces. Mom went to the bathroom in the looming lodge, all windows and wooden pillars and green paneling. Milly squats low to poop, legs quivering, and Dev glances around because he doesn’t have a bag to pick it up. He sees a man standing at the …

When I hear you smile, I apologize for everything. The rain, my dollar store umbrella, the eight hours of airport salads and your dead phone battery, whatever high pressure system pushed this all your way the first weekend you’re back in town. You didn’t come all the way out to the west coast, the first …

I met Stan on his hands and knees, croaking to a Sonoran Desert toad that had escaped its enclosure. SDT-4, a wily and tenacious explorer according to Stan’s notes, was wedged in the space between the lab oven and the wall. Later, when I dried out SDT-4’s skin in the same oven, I concluded that …

Elizabeth is my father’s mother’s daughter and was my best friend growing up. Born two weeks apart, we were raised as sisters, though she was technically my aunt. We grew up knowing she held this ranking. She sometimes used it to get what she wanted. I’m your aunt, she’d say, so you have to share …