Micro Prose: Corner Store by Dina L. Relles

Corner Store Driving through the center of a town that’s not mine, I saw a store on the corner of a street I’d never cross and in the window a sign said SALE said CLOSING and it made me miss you for being gone, miss a stranger for never having met. I fear next time you...

Micro Prose: A Man Who Prays with His Gun by Said Farah

A Man Who Prays with His Gun I wanted to write a Galkaiyo story about goats in a mosque, about a man walking into that same mosque with his AK-47, setting it down before him to pray, and how I’d look back a few years later, thinking: “Did you come to pray for the sake...

Micro Prose: The Loneliest Numbers are One and Infinity by Laura Martin

The Loneliest Numbers are One and Infinity In New York your image is captured thousands of times a day. The red eyes of cameras hide under awnings and in subway tunnels, above storefronts and at busy intersections. Even if you escape their scrutiny you can’t avoid the eyes of fellow subway passengers, the glass walls...

Micro Prose: A Black Eye. A Drowned Eye. by Michael Credico

A Black Eye. A Drowned Eye. It begins with a sore throat. Trouble swallowing. An abscess. Then an enormous bloodshot eye growing out of the abscess and overtaking the rest of her. She is very peculiar! Her husband is furious that he can’t understand what she is looking for. Though her pupil widens like a...

Micro Prose: WHERE BABIES COME FROM: Spare Parts by Ori Fienberg

WHERE BABIES COME FROM: Spare Parts The store specializes in spare parts for second-hand children. They stock baskets full of hair, jars filled with different types of glee, a couple binders of childhood collecting obsessions. We run our fingers through bins of button noses, uncork carboys of sibilant cries, and consider whether baseball cards, bugs,...

Micro Prose: What We Will Be Expecting by Julia LoFaso

What We Will Be Expecting   At the last session of the birthing class we learned about all the ways the baby would try to die. As if it hadn’t already been trying its whole gestation. The second you stopped worrying about miscarriage, preterm labor, stillbirth, you could look forward to worrying about SIDS and...

Micro Prose: Del Rio, TX by Patrick Font

Del Rio, TX Something in my stomach says nothing wants to live here, especially not childhood. We wake to taxidermied turkeys on the cabin wall. Eric’s dad, Donnie, cracks open a beer and a dozen eggs. Donnie says, Eat. We eat. Donnie says, Let’s go. We go.   We ride four-wheelers past barbed-wire fences. Circle...

Micro Prose: Regions of Red by Amanda Gomez

Regions of Red The grandma had scabies. The itching started in her toes and traveled up her body, leaving blisters and scabs in its wake as it forced its epileptic trek onward—a devil’s tango in bas-relief. Soon the mites would reach her thighs and submerge into their warmth. The grandma’s only son took care of...

Micro Prose: Fieldnotes (IV) by Anuradha Bhowmik

Fieldnotes (IV) 1) According to the DSM-5, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is a condition in which a child or teen displays an ongoing pattern of defiant or argumentative behavior and vindictiveness toward people in authority. The cause of ODD is unknown, but the condition is likely a result of environmental and genetic factors. There are...

Micro Prose: Lafayette, Indiana by Sarah Green

Lafayette, Indiana In Lafayette, Indiana, in 2003, sometimes the air smelled like steamed milk for no reason. The restaurant with the best enchiladas was tacked to a used-car sales lot. I swear a bead curtain marked the line between them. But maybe nothing marked it. In winter, on the same block as a tattoo parlor...