The path between the village and baobab tree follows the contour of land and nothing shades it. The drought has claimed every leaf and every animal. Mbuya rises from her sleeping mat as night shrugs an opening for daybreak. She rewraps her cloth and makes no sound as she moves toward the path to the…

Poem: “Lost,” by David Wagoner from Collected Poems 1956-1976 © Indiana University Press. Lost Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It…

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIELD REPORT by Karl Frederick Expedition: Terra B Outpost: 1 Site: Lat. N39d:44m:33s; Long. W104d:57m:13s Artifact ID/Date:* EX-TB-1 / 03 21 14,075 CE Desc Code: Art Location: Limestone cave complex of apparent religious significance. To the side of a large meeting area, a sleeping alcove carved out of cave wall, one meter above the…

The prompt: Whose forest is this? _________________________________________________ + NO TREES By Pam Bolton She was gone that day. November 7th. Down to be with the grandkids. So it was just he and the tree guy and the tree guy’s ex-wife’s stepson. They’d decided it would be okay. She and he had decided. She thought. Later,…

At the next house, you drink an entire half-gallon of milk straight out of the carton, then immediately throw up all over the moonlit kitchen tiles. I can’t help laughing. “What were you thinking?” I say, rubbing your shoulders. You wipe your mouth with your hand. “I was thirsty. Let’s see what’s upstairs.” We roll…

She climbs the hill in the snowstorm, wearing swimming goggles. At the top, she looks out at the bare birches, the grey sky, the swirl of flakes. At the bottom awaits a tree, a pond, a thicket of thorns. She holds the trashcan lid with oven mitts. A towel for a scarf. The whole way…

Life was small. It was tiny even, so tiny it was hard to see it sometimes. Life curled up to make itself even smaller, to fit into the kinds of holes that insects crawl into to get away from bigger insects. Life was sad. Life didn’t want to be an insect. Life was getting backache…

My mom wants me to get my teeth straightened. They’re not really that crooked, just a little jumbled on the bottom. I think they make me look kind of tough, in a good way, but my mom wants me to look just like her — Little Miss Perfect, gobs of gel to keep her hair…

THE ATTRACTION OF BUTTERFLIES by T. L. Sherwood I told Marshall there must be a good reason for the fence. He laughed at me and said I’d believe any lie, as long as it made it into print. “‘Do not enter’ is like them asking, ‘Are you alive or dead?’” He grabbed his gut, pressing…

I The sneakiness started way before the dogs. Back sometime in the 50’s an island was created near the North Pole by the Americans using loads of ice, dirt, chunks of recycled concrete. Disguised as an oil rig to some, an ice floe to others. Nestled inside: a nuclear device titled The Biggie. Who would…

GARY’S INTRODUCTION It’s unnatural, Gary says to himself, to have such heat this time of year. Right in the middle of November — little gnats swarming, flies hatching and buzzing in the windowsills, rhododendrons pushing up half-blooms. Gary watches the purple buds break through brown-green casing, and he wonders how long before the confused flowers…

From Little Pockets of Alarm — Tales Short and ShorterMain Street Rag Press, 2009 Very important to the atmosphere is the dead calm of the sea. A salty sea, remnant of a lake, once fed by a river before the earth heaved and left a briny sinkhole, ringed with mountains, a body of water metamorphosed…