The Northeast | JOYLAND

You Said “Always”

Ester Bloom -

“People don’t save people, Annie,” he says. It is the morning after and Alex is being gentle but firm with me, like he has...

The All-Mutant Soccer Team

Meagan Cass -

The kids we play from downstate like to say it’s inbreeding, the reason our skin is neon green, our teeth blue, our hands like...

The Art of French Cooking

Kyle Lucia Wu -

My little sister is healthy all her life until she turns twenty-two, when she is diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and moves into my...

The Open Palm of Desire

Brian Gresko -

My son found a severed hand in the sandbox. Dug it up, along with half a lime green crayon and the nub of a...

Swanee

Sara Lippmann -

Sara Lippmann's debut collection of short fiction, Doll Palace, is now available from Dock Street Press. Billy Monroe was stuck in the plastic fun tunnel...

The Hour of the Library

Wah-Ming Chang -

Our library is dying. The books break apart like hard dust, and we can no longer read their stories. A film of oil sticks...

The Only Tricks We Know

Emily X.R. Pan -

The day Eugene told me his secret he gave me a bouquet of lilies. Ice clung to the petals like fuzz. Sorry about the frost,...

The History of Hanging Out

Kevin Mandel -

Once on a bright spring morning in a time much like now but also different there was a young Craigy in a room full...

Lisa Is the Water

JoAnna Novak -

“The worst toy for a bulimic is a garbage disposal,” you say. Saturday afternoon on the balcony, flattened out in bikinis with pink rosettes kissing...

Long Beach Life Coach

Aaron Steven Miller -

The life coach sits on the couch. He sits on the edge, palms-to-knees. His chin stays up. Behind him, the light pierces the blind...