Morgan Harlow

      The Noise Outside That day, on the patio, you heard a noise and you jumped up, ready to act, while I just froze, telling the story again and again to your mother, her lover, everyone knew that you were brave and I just froze, my sister, my dad, a...

Kate Rigby

      The Long Grass They’ve just kicked it into the long grass, one politician says to another on TV. I tune out from the others sitting around me at Tree Tops. I feel it now, that long grass, cool and welcome, at the far reaches of the playing fields...

Andy Raffan

      Skipping the Light Fantastic ‘You’d never believe it to look at her, but there goes Rita Pulaski, World Jump Rope Champion nineteen fifty-six,’ my grandmother said, pointing a pudgy finger at the window. ‘Really? Her with the two sticks?’ I said,...

S. F. Wright

    RAWSON, ARGENTINA     Donald’s father was a plumber, his mother a homemaker. As a child, Donald considered his mother’s existence—cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, taking care of Donald and his younger brother—empty. He didn’t think much of his...

Louella Lester

      Marking Your Territory   It was a pack I’d never seen in my neighbourhood before. A panting bulldog and a big-eyed mutt, with a handsome guy in tow. We were all waiting to cross the street, them on one corner, me on the other, when the guy,...

Phoebe Thomson

      Friendly Shriek of bats, in the barn’s rafters. Wild. Sweet and sour smell, our sweat, our blankets, our hay. Pebbles whickering, the clatter of her week-old foal, its brittle legs. Tired. Not-long back to sleep. More light. Later. Rain on...