Robin KinzerMESENTERIC PANNICULITIS AT NINE MONTHS Today, they applied electrodes to my abdomen, then told me to slowly up the voltage. With each added jolt, it felt more like a hundred bumblebees burrowing beneath my scarred and dimpled skin. I…
Meg LeDucWITNESS TO THE ARIA A sculpture soars in the sky of Meijer Gardens, red as a hummingbird heart, rising over the pinprick of a groundskeeper below. Of the painted scarlet steel of his public art, Alexander Liberman once said,…
Erin Pesutchurch There came a time about three years after we moved to Vermont when I decided I wanted to go to church again. Really what I wanted was to go to church at Christmas. Really what I wanted was…
Anne PanningMAGIC WINDOW (CHASING HOME) What did you think when you cupped your hands against the glass and peered inside? Did you think the old wavy Victorian glass was a portal to the past? Did you see your mother in…
A. C.THE PHANTOM BABY The baby dies on garbage day. It’s a Monday, very cloudy, with a sixteen percent chance of rain. There’s a little cough, a little spit, then nothing. The collection truck comes on time. It was not…
Yujia LiPISSER CLAM Learned today that clams break with the slightest pressure between forefinger and thumb. I jumped at the crack, admiring a broken shell, gray and soft and more vulnerable than I— a bed of them clamoring northeast, pressed…
Meg PokrassSHAPES He is kissing his wife goodnight on the cheek as she slips off to the spare bedroom with Tylenol and a hot water bottle. “I smell like a seal,” she says. Before that, she’d been at her surfing…
Wendy MacIntyreTHE TATTOO Wita’s mother had a tattoo that colonized her left forearm. Six words, sinister and enigmatic: “Keep me safe and kill me.” The dyes that needled this sentence into her flesh were sea-green and Prussian blue. Wita was…
Mark WilliamsPARAÍSO Henry Hoover is in his bedroom, mastering the G-chord on his Martin acoustic, when his father walks in and brings up Science Camp. With Henry’s sophomore year of high school behind him and all of summer ahead, he…
Jordan RanftCREATION MYTH WITH CHORUS OF WORMS IN MY BRAIN nothing springs forward it spills as it would from a drain pipe or falling through a solid sheet of glass. there may have been a man with a spear. you…
Thomas JohnsonSHUTTING DOWN Stevie watched the road. Driving right now made him nervous. Cars moved tightly in each direction on the highway. Stevie’s wife, Ruth, was next to him in the passenger seat, and their friend, Helen, shared the backseat…
Gay DeganiBULLY BOYS Her brothers are rough-and-tumble types roaming the streets after Mother and Father go to bed. They are expert at sneaking out, know every creaky floorboard, every groan in the front door hinge. Robbie greased their window sash.…
Mary LewisRED SUN Using the full twelve-foot length of the handle, Jake pushed the floater over the last slab of new concrete, then pulled it slowly back towards him. This was his favorite part of the job because after all…
Samantha NeugebauerVILLAINS Back then it was impossible to do anything with my mother sleeping. In the evenings, we watched Prancer and ate turkey clubs; in the mornings, we drank coffee, then Bloody Marys. It was when I worked in the…
Megan E. O’LaughlinMEDITATING IN HELL Age 24. The Gambia, West Africa. I do not pray five times a day like the people in the village. When I duck into my little house, the girls ask where are you going? I…
Caleb MurrayRANDOM PRECISION I woke up in the morning with a hemorrhage in my brain that made me think that life is some kind of nightmare even though, logically, such a state of affairs would be irrelevant to life—after all,…
Nathan LippsTWO POEMS Controlled Burn To the north they have set fire to a thousand acres of a very real forest to prevent future fires. Walking through the ash it makes sense to him the many ways we handle a…
Shabrayle SetliffTO MY ONCE AND FUTURE BODY Grandmother’s body was vast, heavy, and unknowable. Her belly was like an ocean in a cave. She never understood the glorious figginess of it. The tacky, seeded roundness held together with lovely bruised…
Kevin EguizabalTHE SHAPE OF A FOG It was in the water, the shape Of a fog. Surrounding me with ambiguity. Western shadows. I had so many questions. A begging dog. A valley flowered in spring— Hanging in the air. A…
Kelly PedroTHE BEST THING YOU REMEMBER The baby shower was on a Sunday, a day that was supposed to be about peace and rest, but Connie felt anything but peaceful or restful. Her hips still ached from a terrible night’s…
A Novel by Patrick Modiano, translated by Mark Polizzotti, reviewed by Jeanne BonnerSCENE OF THE CRIME (Yale University Press) I write down all kinds of little snippets of thought because otherwise they will float away. For example, one day in…
Ian Clay SewallON AUTOBIOGRAPHIA: YOURS, MINE, AND OURS 1. Writing stories and essays about the people I remember and the people I know requires stretching out moments, staring through a square piece of stained glass that’s purple and blue and…
A Novel by Miriam N. Kotzin, reviewed by Lynn LevinRIGHT THIS WAY (Spuyten Duyvil) They say it can be done, but it is hard, very hard, for most betrayed wives to regain trust and forge ahead in a marriage with…
Interview by Kathryn KulpaFLASH-WRITERS: TRUST YOUR READER: a conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories (Snake Nation Press) I had the pleasure of interviewing Nancy Ludmerer, a student in one of my Cleaver flash fiction workshops, about…
Interview by Hannah Felt GarnerI Tell My Students All The Time, “Your Job Is to Make Art. Your Job Is Not to Explain Shit,” a conversation with Christopher M. Hood, author of The Revivalists (Harper) I met Christopher M. Hood…
Ona GritzFROM DRAWER TO BOOKSTORE IN JUST TWENTY-FOUR YEARS: The Long and Worthy Journey to Publication The oldest version of my forthcoming middle-grade novel that I can access on my computer is dated 2010, though I know the drafts go…
Interview by Michael McCarthyWisest is she who knows she knows nothing: a Conversation with Alison Lubar, author of Philosophers Know Nothing About Love (Thirty West Publishing House) Read Alison’s poem “Grand Slam” in Issue 39 of Cleaver. I first met…
Interview by Gemini WahhajI LIKE TO THINK THAT ALL OF MY CHARACTERS HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR: A Conversation with Chaitali Sen, author of A NEW RACE OF MEN FROM HEAVEN (Sarabande Books) Chaitali Sen’s short-story collection A New…
Nicholas ClaroINVENTORY My therapist asks me to create a list of people I’ve known who have died. To order their deaths from biggest impact to least and provide some details from when they were alive, or after they weren’t. 1.…
Lyn ChamberlinTHE PRIZE FIGHTER She would go to Paris. When this was all over, this is how she would start again. But today she would go back to caring for him, undo the hook and eye they’d put on the…
Madeleine BarowskyLINE COOK: A LOVE STORY For this task, your tools must be hot. They must be cold. They must be bone-dry or slick with hot water. Cold water. For this task, the item should be room temp. It should…
James LaRowe2020 APRIL My kids’ new favorite game is searching for signs of life in satellite photos. They crowd around the family computer to hunt for civilization in the most far-flung, godforsaken places on Google Earth. They’ve grown adept at…
Amanda HadlockLET’S LICK IT The first night I spent with the guy I dated last summer, he told me we had just snorted the last of our coke when I asked for more, so I said, “Turn the baggie inside…
Andrea MarcusaTHE TUMMY BRIDGE Right now, it’s an old wooden bridge spanning railroad tracks, a rickety structure that’s fun to cross on her way to the beach. Its steep incline causes her car to jump when she zips over it…
Emily HooverMOSAIC FOR MY MOTHER 1. When I was a teen, she’d sit on the porch cloaked in a cloud of cigarette smoke with pruning shears in her hands. She’d whisper to herself while cutting photos of George W. Bush…
Sarah FrelighTHE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE WORLD They come from everywhere, come to us hungry. They wheel in suitcases that they park tidy under tables, drag in trash bags or carry backpacks that they ease off and set…
Lisa Lanser RoseIMPACT A voice above proclaimed: No automobiles may be left unattended within three hundred feet of the facility. I blinked; an imaginary avalanche of flame slammed through the airport. “Where is everybody?” I asked at the empty ticket…
Joe Alan ArtzA CONTENTED SUN RISES Envelopes of Very Small People keep arriving in my mailbox. I bring each envelope in and gently slit open the top flap. The people come out slowly, gasping in awe, looking all around. They…
Lex LuciusOf Comfort and Connection Paintings I live in the Roaring Fork Valley just north of Aspen, Colorado, tucked into the Rocky Mountains. My life is full of family, painting, and horses. My clothes smell of the stable, and on…
Kris WillcoxLOVE OF YOUR LIFE They say you fall in love with your children the moment they’re born, although this was not my experience. Paul was a nice baby, but his needs and insistent gestures confused me. Fifty years ago,…
Paul Joseph EneaHIRAETH Ever since she’s lived in the village, Hanna’s floor fan sounds more like static than white noise. She’s certain the static taints her dreams, which used to be innovative, like prestige television. But these days her dreams…
Laura TanenbaumIN-LAWS “In five years, I’m going to fall in love with a fish,” the four-year-old declares, over hard-boiled eggs, on a ninety-degree day, to no one in particular. “They will be rainbow-colored with gray and black stripes. I will…
Meredith McCarrollDARK MATTER “You know how dark matter is like the absence of space, but it, like, takes up space?” “OK.” “Well, what if dark matter could be contained and it’s like an anti-gravity solution. In a gas form. It…
Dawn MillerTHE EGG Third Place, Cleaver 2022 Flash Competition “The Egg” is a story of conjugal love gone rotten. In this frightening study of betrayal, the author’s fine use of startling and original metaphor is something that knocked me out.…
K. T. MooreWHALE CRATERS “Had one come down overnight.” Eden was waiting for him in the car park. Tayne felt himself sweating by the time he reached her, and as the wind kicked up, a shiver started between his shoulder…
Christina SimonSAFFRON AND BROWN SUGAR My first horse, a palomino mare; horse shows from Del Mar to San Francisco; high school when possible; ran from the red-haired, freckle-faced bully who called out oreo, zebra, half-breed, fucking mulatto; pretended his blows…
Ron TobeyYOU SLEEP UPSTAIRS The annual flood of green from West Virginia’s vast Appalachian forest drubs me senseless. I feel lightheaded. I check my Fitbit. Why does my blood oxygen level drop? My mortality, I wonder. At midnight, the rain…
Janet BurrowayTHE TALE OF MOLLY GRIMM Second Place, Cleaver 2022 Flash Competition This story is the one I kept rereading because it stuck to my brain. I thought I had finished with it and then it pulled me back into…
Theo GreenblattTHE PERSON FALLING HERE The drink is called a Cape Codder, he tells me. Vodka and cranberry juice, two ingredients; too simple to warrant a cocktail name, I think. Cranberries are grown in bogs, he explains, and Cape Cod…
Fannie H. GrayINCENDIES On our honeymoon, I never even noticed an acrid smell. The langoustines, the salade gourmande, the tartare de boeuf, the shimmering, perspiring glasses of sublime rosé, all served with the efficient careless attention which is inherently French.…