Imperial March by Amit Majmudar

Your saviors have landed, blue eyes bright with compassion and rapacity. Your saviors know all about your country’s bittersweet melisma, three thousand year blood feuds, and rickety cotton-looms: They were briefed on the flight over. All about your country, including...

Watching Your Mother Die by Hien Nguyen

When I come home, I do not come home. I do not step over the worn threshold of our side door, the sizzling sound of oil and my mother’s voice soaring as I walk across laminate tiles placed slightly askew, with years of dirt caked by my mother’s busy feet pacing the...

Smiley by Kim Chinquee

My neighbor’s dog is lost. I’ve had a lost dog once, or maybe even twice, and three or four times. Growing up on a farm, my family had outside dogs. They weren’t allowed in the house. The only leashes my family owned were the ones attached to halters to show cows and...

Fortune Cookie by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar

Every day, I wait at the bus stop for Kiara to hop off. On some days, Sandy, the driver, throws me a treat from the goodies bag stashed in the cup holder. Today, it’s a fortune cookie. I remember air-kissing my child as she sat in her usual seat—eighth from the front,...

The Projection by Ryan Griffith

He flips a switch and the projector flickers, scarred film twitching on the wall, and she appears, untouchable, a wicked smile scythed across her face, then he drops the needle, and the dark record spins. A voice like old leather sings about those who never returned...