About CRAFT & The Short Fiction Prize 03 Guest Judge & Special Thanks 04 2020 Results 05 Note from the Editor 07 “Mule”—Third Place 08 by Elie Piha “Toward Inspiration as Craft” 25 by Mercedes Lucero “Yo Te Veo”—Second Place 28 by Rachel Pollon Hybrid Interview: Megan Cummins 44 by Laura Spence-Ash “Ariel”—First Place 47 by Jinwoo Chong “Revise Like a Scientist: A Method Approach to Finding 63 the Right Treatment for Your Story” by Lynne Griffin Excerpts from the Finalists 66 About the Finalists 77 about

CRAFT Short Fiction Prize Established in 2017 as a literary magazine for Established in 2018, the CRAFT Short Fic- fiction, CRAFT has grown in 2020 to include tion Prize is our signature award. Open to creative nonfiction. We explore how writing unpublished short stories up to 5,000 words, works, reading pieces with a focus on the el- this contest was guest-judged in 2018 by Jim ements of craft, on the art of prose. We fea- Shepard, 2019 by Elizabeth McCracken, and ture previously unpublished creative work 2020 by Alexander Chee. The SFP is con- weekly, with occasional reprints, as well as ducted each March and April and judged in weekly critical pieces including essays on the summer, with the top three stories pub- narrative craft, interviews, book annotations lished each fall. and reviews, and more. Each published creative piece includes an author’s note and an editorial introduction that each discuss craft and stylistics in the work.

We do not charge fees for our fiction or creative nonfiction submissions, or for our craft categories, and we are a paying market. Our general submissions are open year-round with no capacity limits. We value accessibil- ity—keeping CRAFT free to read and free to submit to is our priority. We work with all writers, established as well as emerging.

3 alexander chee

ALEXANDER CHEE is the bestselling author of the novels Edinburgh, The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. His essays and stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T Magazine, Harpers, Vulture, and Best American Essays 2016 and 2019, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose, the AAWW Lit Award, the Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Nonfiction Award, and a Lambda Literary Trustees Award. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic, an editor at large at VQR, and teaches as an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College.

author photo by M. Sharkey with thanks to

JOURNAL OF THE MONTH, our prize partner: Get a new print literary magazine in your mailbox on a regular basis. Which one? What you receive changes month-to-month, but every participat- ing magazine is a highly regarded actor in the contemporary literary scene that publishes exciting fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry from new and established voices. Not only will you get to read the best writing being published today, but over time, you’ll get a ter- rific overview of the vibrant “little magazine” scene.

4 results

First Place—Jinwoo Chong: “Ariel” winners Second Place—Rachel Pollon: “Yo Te Veo” Third Place—Elie Piha: “Mule”

Jane Baskin: “Caprice”

Andrea Eberly: “The Portrait of Venus”

Temim Fruchter: “Viduy”

Puloma Ghosh: “Natalya”

Alejandro Heredia: “_____” finalists Jocelyn Nicole Johnson: “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse”

Michelle Go-un Lee: “jump!”

K.C. Mead-Brewer: “The Angel Finger”

Deborah Schupack: “Bird’s Eye View” (withdrawn; not excerpted)

Flávia Stefani: “The Division of Bad News”

Meg Todd: “My Father’s Wife”

Tian Yi: “Body Language”

5 Bridget Apfeld: “Take This” Leslie Blanco: “My Wish for You in the Land of the Dead: A Cuban Sandwich” Madeleine D’Arcy: “To Be a Dearborne” Laura Herbst: “Child of the Mouth” Alejandro Heredia: “then, beauty” Tobey Hiller: “Blue, Wide, and Very Cold” the rest of Pete Hsu: “Game Five” Lucy Jones: “The Outing” the longlist Jill Koenigsdorf: “Tell the Bees” Virginia Marshall: “My Dearest” Hadley Moore: “JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Bobby” Mamie Pound: “Butterscotch Yellow” David Saltzman: “The Loneliest Whale” Caroline M. Schmidt: “Particular Luck” Wendla A. Schwartz: “Spaces” S. Kennedy Sobol: “The Haircut” Elizabeth Tran: “Twin”

Chelsy Diaz Amaya: “The Bird Rattle” Robert Beasley: “The Missionary” Eileen Chong: “The Rice Chest” Sonali Fernando: “The Rose Garden” David Gerow: “Comedy Minus Distance” Stephanie Hamilton: “That Orchard Scene” honorable Marc Joan: “Swiss Watch” LE Keyes: “Letters to Senegal” mention Melissa Uyên-Thi Le: “Fuck You Texas” Jessi Lewis: “Whatever Was Left” Francisco McCurry: “Ecology” Daven McQueen: “Tahanan” Ry Molloy: “One Day, It Will All Make Sense” EJ Pettinger: “Fairy Godmother” Jesse Rasmussen: “Lone Star Park” Nina Siegal: “Gallantry in a Cardboard Box” Grace Yun: “The John from Jongmyo Park” Mario Alberto Zambrano: “Los Gallos” Annina Zheng-Hardy: “The Choice”

6 note from the editor

On behalf of the readers and editors of CRAFT, I’d like to thank each writer who entered short stories for consideration in the 2020 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. We are grateful you gave us the chance to read and consider your words.

We’re delighted to share this digital compilation with you now, complete with the three winning stories, accompanied by author’s notes and Alexander Chee’s introductions; excerpts from a few of our favorite craft pieces, including essays and interviews; and excerpts from finalist pieces.

Thank you for your support!

—Katelyn Keating

The 2020 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize Team

Readers: Amy Barnes, L. Shapley Bassen, Cameron Baumgartner, Melissa Bowers, Winston Bribach, Alyse Burnside, Hannah Christopher, Jacqueline Doyle, Matt Dube, Alyson Mosquera Dutemple, Thomas Ferriello, Mike Goodwin, Rosemary Graham, Kristen Havens, Mike Keeper, Zachary Kocanda, Wilson Koewing, Albert Liau, Claire Lobenfeld, Claudia McCarron, Priyanka Moorjani, Jesse Motte, Hayley Neiling, Kathy Ngoc Nguyen, Elizabeth Ochsner, Vandana Sehrawat , David K. Slay, Cynthia Zhang

Editors: Alex Berge, Suzanne Grove, Katelyn Keating

7 mule

From the first line I felt I could hear this narrator in my ear, so vividly alive, the voice carrying each line with an urgent lyricism that felt effort- less, a story about how bragging hides, if not a broken heart, a broken man, and the broken man points out to the broken world. Our hero is trying to make himself right again and no one is interested in seeing that happen, not even the people who seem to be bringing him in on a deal, and so we begin the story’s electric hopscotch with a free car offered to a down on his luck veteran. As his plan to rescue his fortunes hatches, we understand that what he thinks is opportunity is most likely going to fall down around him, but we’re rooting for him—and this criminal enterprise—all the same. At the end, I wanted a whole novel like this. Elie Piha is a powerhouse, and I can’t wait for what he’ll write next.”

—Alexander Chee

8 Nobody had ever given me anything before, so I didn’t care that the car was a piece of shit. I didn’t care that it was a two-timer, twice handed down, first from me and Davis’s old squad leader to Davis, and now from Davis to me. It was a fucking car, and it was free. To tell the truth, I actually liked that I knew its last two owners, had deployed with them. That made me feel like a legacy. I was four months out of the Army and growing a beard, but the years I’d put in were already looking like they stood for more, and I had the car to prove it.

Davis had given me the worn, silver key and the faded green title while we were standing outside his Tacoma apartment in the rain. There was a vendor offering Mexican street corn and there was the scraping of forks and knives from people eating brunch under a glass awning. I hadn’t known how to thank Davis so I just laughed and said, “Seriously?” He asked me to take good care of it. I said it always did look like a drug dealer’s car, and he told me to be careful going to work for Ronnie. I said you too because Davis had just reenlisted and was on his way back to Afghanistan.

I dropped Davis off at Fort Lewis outside our old barracks and he smacked the hood of the car goodbye, then I drove thirty minutes up to Seattle to say a quick hello to my grandma. I used to visit her on weekends back when I was still stationed at Lewis. I’d hold her under the arm as she shuffled across the street to Congregation Or VeShalom on Saturday mornings, and it’d take ten minutes for us to make the short trip, me holding my hand out to stop traffic, horns bleating, my little grandma’s breathy voice saying, “Oh shut it, shut it,” to the cars. While she prayed, I’d smoke and read on her back porch until the service was over and I had to walk back and hold up traffic again just to help her come home.

9 I’d ridden in the car plenty of times, not just since Davis owned it, but back when our old squad leader did, too. Once a month our squad would skip morning PT and we’d go to Denny’s and eat om- elets and potatoes and pancakes with whipped cream until we could barely walk. I was the one who had started calling the car The Atheist Mobile due to its original bumper stickers. GOD DOESN’T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE WITH GODS KILL PEOPLE. There was one about liking dogs more than humans, too, but when Davis got the car after we came back from OEF in twenty-ten, he’d covered most of the anti-God stickers with red and navy blue Ole Miss ones. Davis used to make the cross over his body armor and chest rig every time we went outside the wire, and our squad leader would tease him, telling Davis that he was one of the only religious people he trusted. At some point, before Davis got the car, someone had keyed In God We Trust into its driver’s side door.

The car was a Saturn and the black paint was faded grey, and I could press the pedal all the way to the floor while driving north on I-5 and not much more would happen under the hood besides the car sounding as though it was about fall into cardiac arrest. When I pulled up to my grandma’s house, she couldn’t believe that someone had given it to me. She was happy for me—she never did like the way I drove her Crown Vic over the speed bumps in her neighborhood— but she also didn’t like the look of the Saturn, either. She lived so close to the synagogue, and I don’t think she wanted her rabbi to see that heap of atheist junk parked in her driveway.

She wanted to know why Davis gave me his car. I told her, “It’s a legacy thing, Grandma,” and I tried to tell her about how Davis had gotten it as a gift from a guy we both used to serve under and how now Davis was doing the same thing for me. I think a car was too

10 much for her to understand, though, even if it was just a piece of shit Saturn. My dad always talked about how her growing up in the Depression had shaped everything she did. That’s why Grandma has three freezers in the basement, he’d say. That’s why she cuts cou- pons. That’s why she’ll drive across town for gas that’s two cents cheaper.

In Seattle I left my grandma with a kiss on the cheek and I got on I-5 again, this time heading south. I had one earbud in listening to Ethan Hawke read Slaughterhouse Five from beginning to end. I had thought about stopping in Portland, but I knew Ronnie was waiting on me. There was a job waiting for me, too, and I was happy to have the car now to contribute something to Ronnie and his brother’s business.

As I was heading up the mountains in southern Oregon, I paused my book when my dad called. He asked about Grandma and about the car, and I lied to him that I’d checked the oil when Davis gift- ed it to me in Tacoma. Then all of the sudden an eighteen-wheeler changed into my lane damn near on top of me. “You blind asshole,” I yelled into the phone. A string of angry, bumper-to-bumper cars honked behind me so I swerved to the inside shoulder for fear of being swiped off the road completely by the semi. My dad asked if everything was okay. My rear tires fishtailed back and forth and I yelled “Holy fuck” then dropped the phone between my seat and the center console. I got The Atheist Mobile under control, took a few breaths, and waited for a break in traffic to pull back out onto the road, then I spent the next couple of miles squeezing my hand into the crevice where my phone disappeared. Eventually, I did find my phone, and I had to flex my fingers like tweezers in order to slip it back out from under the seat. My dad had hung up, and I was going to call him back, but then I felt something soft. It was a pair of

11 yellow cotton panties. In a glittery font across the ass cheeks was the word Saturday.

In Redding I called Ronnie and he put me on speaker so Lucky could give me directions to his house. I hadn’t been to Redding before, but Ronnie had warned me that it could be just as redneck as some of the small towns back in Georgia where we’d grown up. A meet-you- at-the-Walmart kind of town. I’d been living in Oakland with Ron- nie since I’d gotten out and only flown up to Seattle to visit Davis before he deployed again and to see my grandma.

Oakland was nothing like Georgia. Ronnie and I could drive around all day and never get bored. Back home, it felt like there were only three places to escape to, two of which were empty parking lots and the third a field where we could only go at night because the farmer was a gun nut and had warned us that he was within his rights to pepper us with birdshot. Me and Ronnie made sure to piss on his mailbox every time we visited his field.

Ronnie knew the best views in the Bay and when I first moved there Ronnie showed me his favorites. He took me to Treasure Island and he took me to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. He took me to Bernal Heights in SF and we drank a six pack under the tower. He told about the dealers him and his brother dealt with, about the farms they bought from, tucked away in the mountains of Humboldt. I smoked a joint all to myself. I told Ronnie how fucking happy I was to be out of the Army, how fast it all seems to have gone by, but how I could remember counting minutes in the back of an MRAP more times than he could imagine. Ronnie said he was going to make a million dollars, that he’d always have work for me if I wanted it. He said him and his brother had the best connections. Then he said

12 he was never going to go back to Georgia and I said I wasn’t either. We got in his pickup and talked about finding a bar so I could meet someone, but I fell asleep when we were driving over the bridge and the next thing I knew Ronnie was waking me up outside our duplex on MLK. He’d said I’d snored the whole way.

Lucky’s voice came through my phone. He said, “Yo, it’s Lucky. Where you at?”

“I’m heading down two-ninety-nine,” I said. I had my phone on speaker tucked in my shirt pocket. It was a burner Ronnie had given me. We called them bats because they were small and black and flipped open like a flapping wing.

“What do you see?”

I told Lucky that I’d just passed one of the biggest goddamn church- es I’d ever seen, and he told me that his street was about a mile past that on the right. Lucky kept me on the line. I could hear Ronnie and his brother in the background laughing, his brother’s grinding voice. I’d only met Bitz once before on account of him being nine years older than us. I’d been thirteen and my mom had dropped me off at Ronnie’s house. Bitz was home on leave from Iraq. Ronnie and I grabbed sodas from his fridge then headed for the back door. There was a creek out back and there were big pines that had fallen over it, and we liked to run across them, arms out wide, balancing, the bark slippery under our sneakers. Bitz was sitting on the couch and before we made it outside, he called Ronnie a little bitch and suggested we were going out to the woods to suck each other’s dicks like a couple of horny skunks. I remember it as if it were yesterday because it was the first time I’d heard someone talk like that. For years afterwards, I wondered if I was missing something obvious about the sex lives 13 of skunks. Ronnie told his brother to shut the fuck up—I’d never heard my best friend use that word—and Bitz exploded off the couch like buckshot. Bitz had a high-and-tight haircut and he was all muscle and bronze like a movie star. He body-slammed Ronnie and slapped him over and over again in the face, and then he asked me if I’d like to get some hits in. I said, “No, thanks,” and Bitz called me a pussy. Even Ronnie said for me to just go on and do it, that his brother wouldn’t be satisfied until I took a few licks.

Bitz had been a Ranger in Iraq. Most of his friends were dead from bombs or drugs or suicide. I knew he was crazy. Ronnie said Bitz wanted me to work for them because Bitz liked that I’d been grunt, even if I’d been just a grunt and not some highspeed Ranger.

Everything east of Redding turned from strip malls to forests. Gated driveways disappeared up shaded hillsides when I turned onto what I figured must be Lucky’s street. I thought about my new car in this fancy neighborhood, how it didn’t fit in, or maybe it fit in too well. After two months of living with Ronnie and getting a glimpse into California’s weed business, I’d started seeing anyone who had more money than me, which was just about everyone, as likely having a hand or two in the pot game.

That’s what Ronnie and Bitz called it. The game. When something went bad, like someone they knew got robbed or they lost a ship- ment, or if someone God forbid went to jail, Ronnie and Bitz would say, “Chalk it up to the game.” We were all players in the game.

I told Lucky I’d arrived and his gate buzzed and slowly swung back. I drove up and parked. His house was two stories high and its face was all windows. A black Mercedes nosed towards my Saturn from an open garage door as if suspicious of the newly arrived company. 14 Behind the car I counted three dirt bikes and a four-wheeler, and outside poking around the side of the garage was the tail end of a speedboat with its name stenciled in Old English–type across its rear: Pocahontas.

I walked right in. I didn’t know what kind of dog it was that greeted me, but it had short white hair, clipped ears, and a long skinny tail like a stingray. Its chest was like a whiskey barrel. The dog must’ve weighed two hundred pounds. Though its tail was wagging, my in- stincts told me I should cover my nuts with my hand and back into the corner behind the front door.

“He doesn’t bite,” a woman’s voice called out.

“Hey, buddy,” I said to the dog.

He was smiling and he sat down in front of me, his back legs shifted out to the side. He didn’t have a collar on and I asked the voice what his name was. I kneeled down and started petting him.

“That’s Benji,” the voice answered. “Everyone’s in the basement.”

I said, “Hey, Benji,” and scratched behind his ears then walked further into the house.

Thick beams ran along the ceiling and skylights framed in the night. All the walls in the living room were lined with long black leather couches and the white-carpeted floor was littered with plastic toy trucks and remote-control cars. There was a Scarface poster and one from The Fast and the Furious tacked up in the hallway. I made my way into the kitchen and Benji went into living room and lay down on the floor. The TV was on, some reality show, people arguing. The volume was turned up and the arguing reached to the ceiling.

15 There was a woman cutting carrots and celery on a granite kitchen island and she introduced herself as Deedee. She said she was Lucky’s wife. Two toddlers in high seats stared at her with their mouths open from the other side of the island, and there was a purple and green bong between them next to the dish where Deedee was putting the cut vegetables. I asked her what her kids’ names were and she told me but I immediately forgot. I said, “Hey, kiddos,” and Deedee told me they were about ready for bed.

“Did you just come up from Oakland?”

“Down from Seattle, actually.”

Deedee said, “Wow,” and then pointed with the chef’s knife towards the spiral staircase that led to the basement. She told me she’d join everyone once she put her babies to bed.

In the basement I found Lucky and Ronnie and Bitz. There were bean bag chairs and a fifty-inch flat-screen and an Xbox and a PlayStation, and a liquor cart and everyone was drinking out of short crystal glasses. A punching bag hung from chains in the corner and the TV was on. A stereo played Biggie Smalls and the floor was covered in pot. Garbage bags full of pot. Plastic tubs full of pot. Twice-vacuum sealed bags of pot I knew weighed exactly one pound each.

“The mule has arrived,” Bitz said. He sat in a leather swivel chair and wore black pointed leather shoes. He smiled and the way his legs were stretched out and his shoulders bunched up he looked like he was made out of something heavier than flesh and bone.

Ronnie nodded at me and I nodded back. He was weighing pot to seal up. He wore latex gloves.

16 Lucky offered me a drink and I took one and I asked Ronnie if he needed help and he said there was only one vacuum sealer and that I could just relax. They asked about my car and Bitz joked about how my battle buddy Davis had dumped his trash off on me because we were scummy grunts. He said Rangers take care of each other. Lucky said a free car is a free car and I agreed, and Bitz said, “After a few weeks, Mule, you’ll be able to buy a new car, cash.”

The vacuum-sealed pounds piled up around Ronnie as Bitz and Lucky talked prices and future deals and logistics and how much money there was to be made. Later Deedee came down. She was holding the bong and she offered it around and everyone turned it down. Ronnie didn’t smoke when he was working, and I didn’t know Lucky well enough to know if he didn’t smoke or if he was simply stoned all the time. Bitz turned it down, too. He said it made him paranoid.

Deedee offered me the bong. I saw that it wasn’t an ordinary piece and I asked her if it was weed.

“It’s resin.”

“Is that weed?”

Ronnie said, “It’s a concentrate,” and I asked how I did it.

Deedee held the bong up to my mouth and said hit it like normal and then she started heating up the end with a handheld torch as I breathed in. I watched a thick grey smoke twirl in the chamber.

Deedee pulled the slide and I cleared the smoke. It shot into my lungs. I tried to cough but nothing came out. I was fucked instant- ly. My vision flicked on and off and I heard Bitz laughing as I stood

17 up and stumbled towards the bathroom. I leaned over the sink and coughed and dry-heaved and I saw myself through the eyes of a fly perched on the ceiling.

I was upside down. My shoulder blades shook under my shirt. I’d been out of the Army for four months and I was soft and I wanted to impress Bitz and Ronnie and Lucky and Lucky’s wife, and I wondered why I hadn’t even taken a fucking moment to think before hitting her bong. My chest was trapped in hot oil. I kept looking at the mirror to see if blood was running from my eyes. I wondered if Bitz was right, that Davis really had just dumped his trash off on me. I wondered how long I’d been a sucker and I wondered if everyone could see it or if it was only visible to the people that wanted to use me.

Bitz was laughing, but I really only worried if I’d embarrassed Ron- nie. I expected to walk out of the bathroom feeling naked. It felt obvious that I had been the ass end of a joke my entire life. My face was the punch line and I saw myself choking and slipping in Lucky’s basement and waking up with blood between my teeth.

I don’t know how long I was in the bathroom. Eventually the cough- ing stopped and then I was just really high, which wasn’t so bad, and when I took a seat on a bean bag next to Ronnie he asked if I was okay, and I said, “For a second, I thought I was going to die.”

Bitz said, “Boy, you got stuck, Mule. You were in the next dimen- sion.”

I laughed with everyone and it felt like I was going to pass out and I didn’t fight it. As my eyes closed and I curled up on the bean bag, I listened to Lucky talk about a book he’d just read. It was called As

18 If, and it had taught him to act as if he were already what he aspired to be. He kept repeating the title. “As If. As If.” He said it was the first book he’d ever read, and the last thing I remember before passing out was Bitz laughing so hard that he was screeching. He couldn’t believe that Lucky had never read a book before, and that made me feel a lot better.

x x x

The next morning Ronnie and I loaded the four duffle bags full of the pot that him and Bitz had purchased from Lucky into the back of Ronnie’s rental car. Ronnie handed me the keys and gave me a pair of fake glasses and a sweater, and he told me to keep my bat turned on. I gave him the keys to The Atheist Mobile and him and Bitz laughed as they lowered themselves into it. Ronnie drove. Bitz was on his third DUI. I followed them down the driveway and back onto highway two-ninety-nine, then lost them at a light in Redding and headed south down I-5.

It took me seven and a half hours to get to Bakersfield. The whole trip I kept Ronnie’s rental on cruise control at sixty-six miles per hour and I listened to Siddhartha on my old iPod, and when that fin- ished I tuned to the radio and found a classical station which kept my mind off how long I was going to go to jail if I got pulled over. Ronnie and Bitz offered me fifty bucks per pound for the job. I had seventy-five in the trunk. All I had to do was drive and deal with the drop-off. Bitz knew a guy in Bakersfield who could take as much as Bitz could get him, so when I got to Bakersfield I called the number from a McDonald’s parking lot and Bitz’s contact told me he’d come meet me and I could follow him to his house.

The contact showed up ten minutes later looking like he could be 19 someone’s dentist. He didn’t introduce himself, just nodded for me to follow, and when we got to his house, he helped me unload the duffle bags from his garage and up to a second-floor bedroom. There was a handgun on the kitchen counter and he handed me a paper bag full of cash and I asked him if he had a place where I could count it.

I called Ronnie and told him how much was there—forty grand total—and Ronnie said it should be four times that. I handed the phone to Bitz’s contact and listened to him say he’d have the rest soon, that he was waiting on a few different people to pay him. The tip of the gun was hanging over the edge of the counter. I thought about how fast I could get to it. I wondered if the guy had another one on him. I imagined cops busting in and me diving through the glass window and hoping there were bushes to catch my fall.

The contact handed my bat back to me and I asked Ronnie what he wanted me to do, and Ronnie said, “Just bring back what he gave you. That’s just how it goes sometimes.” Then Ronnie said he may have to pay me a little less than we agreed on, and I didn’t say anything except that I’d be back in a few hours. Driving with forty grand was a risk, too, but I didn’t get paid for that. Any amount over ten was subject to confiscation. I could tell Ronnie was pissed, and I wanted to get away from that dentist and his gun.

With an empty trunk I headed back to Oakland, the floorboards of the rental covered in wrappers and empty Gatorade bottles. It was near one in the morning when I finally arrived. I gave Ronnie the money. He counted it and then handed me what we’d agreed on ini- tially, and I told him I would drive back down to Bakersfield and col- lect the money when their contact said he had it. I said, “Fuck that creep in Bakersfield. We’ll beat it out of him if we have to.” Ronnie

20 laughed, and the next morning when I woke up and went outside to drink my coffee on the sidewalk like I always did, I saw that there was a parking ticket wedged under the wiper of my Saturn. It was for sixty dollars. Street cleaning. I remembered the twenty-seven-fifty Ronnie had just paid me and I drank my coffee in the sun.

Ronnie didn’t have another job for me just yet, so I decided to get the Saturn put in my name. I waited at the DMV without an ap- pointment for four hours and read Stranger in a Strange Land only to have the clerk tell me I had to get The Atheist Mobile to pass a smog test first. I asked where I got that done and he said “Google it,” then asked if there was anything else he could do for me. He reminded me of paper pushers in the Army, the guys who took pride in the cleanliness of their uniforms, who never left their desk because that was their kingdom. I said, “No” and “thanks” and that I’d be back.

The car didn’t pass smog. It needed its engine rebuilt. That was going to cost three grand. The car was barely worth one. I called Ron- nie but he didn’t pick up. I looked up a metal scrap yard and found one in the flats of West Oakland. I stopped first and got a roast beef sandwich at a bar and had a few beers, then made my way to the scarp yard. It was rows of engine blocks and doorless refrigerators. There was a pile of crushed cars and bumpers, and in one corner were dozens of rims and steel wheels stacked in towers. The owner of the scrap yard looked over The Atheist Mobile while I stood under something that looked like a commercial jet wing. I thought he might say something about how ugly it was. He didn’t. He just gave me two hundred in tens and twenties.

I walked home and I decided not to tell Davis what happened. I pic- tured him praying in the back of an MRAP, his convoy passing under

21 the shade of a concrete guard tower. West Oakland was littered with windswept trash and the streets and sidewalks looked gutted. It was getting dark, and under a bridge a city of tents began to glow. Some- where a basketball swished through a chain net.

I told Ronnie about the car and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world and seeing him made me realize he was right. Ronnie said dinner was on him, and that night we ate one hundred and sixty dollars’ worth of sea bass and oysters and I had four whiskey cock- tails. We laughed about Lucky and the book he’d read. We said, “As if I wasn’t an idiot. As if I wasn’t a fuckhead. As if I knew how to fucking read.”

Then we went back to our duplex on MLK and Ronnie’s girl came over. I went to my room and they fucked in the living room and I could hear her going o o o o. I scrolled through my phone. I found a joint in my desk and smoked it while bouncing on my bed in my un- derwear. I did forty pushups and one hundred jumping jacks. Oak- land was yelling outside my window. My neighbors were curtained by bedsheets with cartoons on them.

Ronnie and I were going to be millionaires. In a few weeks, I would buy a new car with cash. I’d put together my own deals. I’d pay people to drive weed for me. I held my three grand in my hands and then put it in stacks of hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds again. I fanned each stack out on my sheets. I took a picture of them with my phone. I lay down next to my money. The house was quiet.

x x x

22 ELIE PIHA is an MFA student at Cornell University. In 2016, he won Southwest Review’s David Nathan Meyerson Award for Short Fiction. Before writing, from 2008 to 2012, Elie served as a paratrooper in the Army. His fiction is forthcoming in War, Literature and the Arts. He is at work on a novel.

23 Author’s Note

I can’t talk about “Mule” without talking about Cherry by Nico Walker. If anyone who’s read Cherry reads my story, they’re going to notice the obvious parallel in plot: a soldier leaves the military and enters a world of drugs. But that aspect of Cherry isn’t what inspired me to write “Mule.” I had my reasons for writing about California’s marijuana business just as Mr. Walker had his in regards to writing about heroin.

That said, reading Cherry was, for me, an incredible, inspiring, mind-opening trip. The protagonist’s voice was something I’d been searching for. The writing, from chapter length to scene development to the book’s blunted, deadpan sentences, were what I wanted to do with my own writing. I was one semester into a two- year MFA program when I read Cherry, and it was Cherry that finally gave me permission to just let go and write.

Sure, a writer has to have his toolkit. Maybe you’re a killer writer of dialogue, but can’t come up with an engaging narrative arc. Whatever. Know your strengths, know your weaknesses. With “Mule,” as soon as that first sentence came to me, I knew what kind of story I was writing. I knew that I was going to lean on my strengths. Straightforward sentences. Punchy descriptions. Humor. Masculinity— what that is and what it isn’t. When I was drafting “Mule,” every time that ambitious writer-student voice spoke up in my mind and said, “How about a clever metaphor that speaks to the narrative at large?” I pushed it aside and reminded myself to just tell the story.

“Mule” came out in a bang, and I think that process was the result of a lot of pent up creative energy locked behind a literary world that I didn’t feel like I belonged to. It just so happened that Cherry was the keeper to that door. Since lockdown in the spring, I’ve picked up and put down more books without finishing them than I ever have in my entire life. That’s just where I am in my writing career right now. Maybe a book promises an original story, but if the voice isn’t speaking directly to what I’m trying to do with my own fiction at the moment, forget it. I’m not interested.

Read what you want. I mean, have an open mind, but don’t be afraid to tell Tolstoy or Austen that you’ve got better things to do if they’re not absolutely blowing your mind. The highest compliment a writer can give a book is, “Reading this made me want to write.” 24 toward inspiration as craft

Until recently, I had a very clear notion of standing of the defining characteristics of what craft meant. It meant technique. Liter- craft, partly because Heidegger aptly com- ary devices. Structure. Figurative language. pares craftsmanship to the process of poetry. Setting. Point of view. In short, it meant what For Heidegger, the objective of craftsman- happens on the page. It meant careful con- ship was not just “to gain facility in the use of struction. tools” or “gather knowledge about the use of customary forms of the things he is to build.” In our contemporary understanding in En- Craft was also a matter of discovering “the glish, craft is almost always relegated to tech- hidden riches” of the wood and understand- nique. Yet, it was not until around the time of ing one’s own “relatedness to wood.” If craft the Industrial Revolution that we even begin is also meant to focus on the writer’s “relat- to see the word “technique” appear in relation edness,” then it almost inherently brings into to the process of “making” in the English lan- focus the idea of thinking about one’s own re- guage. The influence of manufacturing during lationship to writing. Craft is not only about the Industrial Revolution has led us to believe what happens on the page. that craft and craftsmanship are synonymous with machine-like methods of formal con- Some of these conversations have begun to struction. This influence, however, has largely take place. I only wish that texts like Claudia reduced our understanding of craft. Rankine and Beth Loffreda’s anthology The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of Scholars and poets such as Sherod Santos and the Mind had been introduced to me along- Tim Mayers have entered into this conversa- side learning about the construction of a vil- tion concerning creative writing craft. Fre- lanelle. How does my identity inform my quently, they return to Martin Heidegger’s creative writing process? I cannot think of theories on thinking to arrive at an under- one creative writing class I have taken where

25 I was asked to consider my own “relatedness” individualized. Carl Fehrman examines this to language as an important element of my debate in his book Poetic Creation: Inspiration or craft. For the most part, it is something that Craft noting that “[t]he psychological differ- is assumed. ences between individual artists’ manner of conceiving and shaping their material vary so Thinking about creative writing means think- greatly that no one theory of stages can em- ing about craft as not solely limited to ac- brace the whole of this complex phenome- quired skills and techniques but also as con- non.” Since the conventional wisdom suggests stituted in a creative process that involves the that inspiration cannot be taught, we are left inward turn, the understanding of the self. It with what can. We are left with technique. involves a process of being “in spirit.” To put What results, is a notion of craft that redi- it simply, it involves inspiration. rects its focus to literary devices, aesthetics, With its roots in divinity, inspiration now “is and imitation. normally interpreted as emanating not from The question we should be asking ourselves above but from below, from the subcon- is how we can expand our notion of craft. scious.” Janet Burroway describes inspiration Santos asks, “[W]hat do you know before- in this manner, writing that it is “a gift from hand when you sit down to write a poem?” the subconscious to the conscious mind.” How can we learn or teach what it means to Robert Olen Butler’s approach to writing in be both a creative and a writer? We do a dis- From Where You Dream, one that Burroway has service to ourselves as artists if we do not described as “method writing,” approaches also uphold inspiration as much as we do creative writing from the unconscious. For technique. If we do not study and develop an Butler, writing happens not so much on a acumen of inspiration. technical level, but “from the place where you dream.” What happens in the mind is as Inspiration as craft is about our relationship important as what happens on the page. to language. It is thinking about what happens to our imagination before we ever put pen to Of course, relying on inspiration is highly paper. What is going on in this moment? How

26 do we develop this? How do we treat this pro- and the chapbook, In the Garden of Broken cess as a skill that can be honed and developed Things (Flutter Press 2016). She is the 2017 win- in the same way that we might hone and de- ner of the Langston Hughes Creative Writing velop a single sentence? We do writing exer- Award for Poetry and her writing can be found cises to develop our craft. What might inspi- in Puerto del Sol, The Pinch, Heavy Feather Review, and Curbside Splendor among others. ration exercises look like? We should seek, as You can see more of her work at mercedeslu- craft critic Tim Mayers suggests, to “discover cero.com. that meanings can be made to fit words, not just the other way around.”

Next week, I am taking my creative writing x x x students to an art museum. We’ll certainly Works Cited: use this to discuss ekphrasis, but the goal is also an exercise in inspiration, a moment just Butler, Robert Olen. From Where You Dream: the Pro- as integral to the creative process. I want to cess of Writing Fiction. Edited by Janet Burroway. guide my writing students toward inspira- Dawson, Paul. Creative Writing and the New Human- tion as craft. Before they ever begin writing, ities. I want to place them in a precise moment in which they may be drawn to painting or Fehrman, Carl. “Periodicity and the Stages of Literary sculpture and find themselves wondering: Creativity.” Poetic Creation: Inspiration or Craft. Why those colors? Why is her hand placed right Heidegger, Martin. “Lecture I.” What is Called Think- there? Why am I enchanted by this? What does this ing? say about me? Mayers, Tim. “(Re) Writing Craft.” College Composi- tion and Communication.

x x x Santos, Sherod. “Eating the Angel, Conceiving the Sin: How Does Poetry Think?” A Poetry of Two Minds. MERCEDES LUCERO is the author of Stereometry (Another New Calligraphy 2018)

27 yo te veo

“Yo Te Veo” is one of those stories that I love where what is at stake is uncertain throughout until the last line. Set beside a pool bar on a vacation, the narrator is a playful enough companion, and begins innoc- uously, with the people watching I miss so much now. A dropped wallet and a scan of the contents turns this into an encounter where she learns that the people she was watching were watching her. She is suddenly drawn into a conversation that tells her more than she wants to know about herself and her life, inexplicably dangerous once it is set in mo- tion. The ending offers up to the reader an uneasy sort of sublime—the feeling of an angel walking, if not on your grave, hers, and the feeling is not so much her death approaching as the need for a whole new life. Rachel Pollon is a quicksilver presence on the page throughout, keeping the story moving on nervous laughter, until the ending, which is the quarter she pulls from your ear, all unexpected—and when you realize she is a magician.

—Alexander Chee 28 It’s hard to make out what language they’re speaking. At first glance I think they might be Italian. But as I eavesdrop further, take them in from behind my hopefully opaque-enough sunglasses, I realize I’m mistaken. None of the sounds emitted from their mouths are remotely familiar. I consider that they might be Croatian. Maybe Portuguese. I regret how limited my knowledge of Spanish is and that my education of it ended in high school. I remind myself that it’s not too late to learn French. They look like foreign film actors. I continue studying them.

They are two couples probably in their late thirties, presumably on vacation, drifting in the water together. One of the men playfully pushes his partner against the side of the pool as he kisses the back of her neck. The other couple, the man moving slowly about the water, takes his woman for a ride. She holds on to him, her chest pressed to his back, her arms around his neck, her face to the sun, smiling. He moves his arms with an over-pronounced faux determination, chugging her along. In less intriguing people this might be irritat- ing. They seem to have all the time in the world, free from burden, deficient of doubt. They radiate an air of having the universe rigged, of being at one with some essential truth, all the while rapt in a conversation I can’t understand.

At a certain point I wonder if they can tell I’m watching. If they can, if they even notice, what do they make of me? Do I exude anything captivating or egregious? Do they wonder about my provenance? People tend to think New York, which I always take as code for possibly Jewish. No one ever guesses Los Angeles. I don’t scream sunny and carefree. A musician I had a thing with put it best when he told me I “whisper anxiety.” He meant it as a compliment and wrote a song inspired by me called “Her Head” that was never released in

29 the States but was a quote, unquote hit in the Netherlands. This walk down memory lane reminds me that I also do not speak Dutch.

I turn toward Michael, reclining in the lounge chair next to me, and ask, in a hushed tone at a discreet decibel, while nodding at the pool, “What language is that?” He shakes his head; he doesn’t know either. He removes the headphones resting around his neck, places them on the end table situated between us, turns over on his stomach, makes multiple attempts to cover his face with his bucket hat, and closes his eyes.

Soon the women are getting out of the water. I wonder if and when my pale, violet-hued skin will begin to take on the olive brown tone theirs has. The blond, definitely bleached, wears a classic cut biki- ni. Electric blue triangle top with white borders. Mine has similar details, causing me to conclude that crochet is trending worldwide. The other, brunette, with the kind of highlights that frequent sun exposure bestows, wears a cream strapless one piece with ruching detail. They saunter. Lackadaisically, not flaunting. One hunches a bit. They look something like tired, almost recovering from a situation. They both wear sunglasses, so I can’t see their eyes. They seem to have a sort of conspiratorial bond. It makes me miss my best friend.

As they walk their way out of my view, and on to, I imagine, a stroll on the shoreline or to sunbathe on the sand, I turn my attention back to the men. It doesn’t seem farfetched that they may have just pulled off a successful scam, or possibly a heist, and that they’re here blowing some cash in celebration. In my experience, islands tend to attract a certain fringe type, people escaping from or escaping to, who, for one reason or another, like being off the grid.

30 The attraction for Michael and me, besides the obvious beauty and Zen-like spell that bodies of water, palm trees, and warm sand tend to put people under, is that we seem to work better as a couple when we’re somewhere else. It’s nothing we’ve ever acknowledged out loud, but like an accordion, going away brings us closer together. I know this to be true: if you want to be indelible, disappearance is key.

The taller of the men suddenly calls out to someone. It’s the brunette, standing off in the distance, hands on her hips trying to tell him something but not wanting to shout. There’s lots of gesticulat- ing. It’s possible she wants him to know she’s heading back to their room. Needs the key. Maybe she’s batting away a bee. If only we all spoke sign language.

The men continue to move about seemingly in no hurry. Floating, dunking themselves, a full head and body immersion into the water, pushing their dark, wet hair off their faces, laughing at who knows what.

I wonder how they met. Did the women become friends first, or the men? Were one of the pair already a romantic couple trying end- lessly to fix up their confirmed bachelor friend whose exploits with various and sundry women they’d listened to for seemingly ever until one day he met “the one”…“la una”…and she folded into this brood’s embrace?

Or vice versa?

Maybe they all grew up in the same village. Or went to university together. Maybe one was the other’s parole officer and they fell in love in the shadows.

31 Michael’s and my origin story began before we ever spoke. He was friends with people my friends were friends with and I would see him around, out in the world, in random places. At an opening for a performance artist whose thing was to never actually get on stage, just mill about as an audience member and eavesdrop on what people said. At a birthday party where the person being celebrated cracked her tailbone trying to do a handstand while inhaling from a bong. Michael had the air of not giving a shit, which I found aspirational. I give too much of a shit. It’s burdensome. When we did finally talk, running into each other at a dog park that, although he didn’t have a dog, he visited because he liked them better than humans, I told him I was seeing someone even though I wasn’t. I could tell he needed the challenge.

I think about how we come to conclusions and make up our minds about things and people by our experiences with or observations of them and how unreliable that is. At most, I estimate, we can only know sixty-five percent of a person. The other thirty-five percent is submerged. Like this man whose romantic partner wants him to come closer.

Now the men are out of the pool, wrapping towels around themselves. They’re gradually positioned square in front of my cabana, and the shorter, more hirsute one looks me directly in the eye and smiles. Then he makes the international sign for “check, please” and I realize he’s looking at the pool attendant picking up towels just behind me. My face goes hot for a second and I hope it looks like a sunburn as the attendant huddles with the men. They move past me and over to some out-of-my-eyeshot beach chairs, or possibly to count their money, or perhaps back to their not quite adjacent, but in the same complex, partial ocean view rooms for a late afternoon

32 love making session with their significant others.

Michael changes position again, sitting upright and covering his ears with his headphones in one seamless move. He is a man of action, I am a woman of words. I lean over to him and, using his armrest for balance, place my lips on his cheek for a moment longer than usual. Do you hear me, I wonder but do not say. He smiles at me, then lies his head back, classic rock seeping out from his ears, tapping into an underlying but ever-present sense that I am invisible. Or, at times, should be.

“I’m going to jump in the water,” I simultaneously say and gesture at him.

“Ask the waitress to come over if you see her?” he says too loudly, above the din of his headphones.

I nod that I will and then I’m gone.

I approach the steps that happen to be closest to the area where the foursome were sitting and slowly make my way in, one deliberate step at a time, when I notice something on the floor near the chairs the group had been camped out on. It’s emerald green, a wallet maybe, a leather pouch of some kind. I look around and no one else is in the vicinity. The always attentive, until now, poolside attendants are nowhere to be found. The area had been tidied. The towels and drinks were disappeared, like a crime scene wiped of all evidence. The only hold out is the emerald green elephant in the room.

Not absolutely sure what the right or wrong thing to do is, I follow a dim but increasingly throbbing guiding light inside me and climb back up the few stairs I had descended just moments before and

33 make my way over to retrieve the now practically glowing green oddity. It’s leather. A notebook. Has a cord around it that fastens it. I loosen the cord and subtly and cautiously flip through it. I find sketches. A house, a sunset, a male face that may or may not be a rendition of the taller man, and, of course, some words I don’t understand.

I glance over at Michael but he’s still lying flat, eyes probably closed or at least not looking at me, and reflexively decide to take the notebook in the direction I last saw them all heading. An anticipatory dread morphs into excitement. I wonder if “taking the bull by the horns” is a phrase also used in their language.

As I round the corner the ocean’s waves crash, seeming to announce my arrival, and I notice straight ahead, in the not too far distance, the four of them camped out at the seaside bar. The women are sitting on stools shaped like shells, the men lean next to them. They’re chatting with the bartender. I’m suddenly aware of how exposed I am. Not wearing a cover-up, just my bathing suit, no sandals. My steps feel more weighted as I realize I may have been rash. Though it seemed like the thing to do only moments ago, I am now exponen- tially mostly wanting to get it over with. I remind myself this is the perfect progression to the story that’s been playing out in my head for the last hour. And that I’ve come this far. Contact is in my grasp.

None of the group notice my approach, so when I reach them, they’re startled by my hello. The stockier of the men turns towards me first.

“Hello,” he says, in his indeterminate accent.

The others turn their bodies and gaze towards me. Without warning

34 I offer up the green excuse.

“I found this,” I tell him. “I was at the pool and noticed it where you were sitting.”

Stocky smiles and says something to Electric Blue Crochet, then to me, “It’s where she keeps all her secrets.”

Electric Blue Crochet smiles in response then blows a wisp of cigarette smoke above her own head.

“Thank you,” she says, in a thick accent, followed by something under her breath that indicates relief, and then, “Good citizen.”

“Buy you a drink?” Stocky asks.

I tell him no thank you, that I’m about to go swimming. As if in this scenario that has any bearing on the situation.

“Did you open it?” Electric Blue Crochet asks.

“No,” I say, and guiltily mumble something about just seeing it on the ground.

“I would have,” she says.

They all laugh.

Cream Strapless, in a voice just as raspy as I imagined, says, “I saw you watching us. I guess it was a good thing.”

“I wasn’t watching,” I say too quickly, then add, “I was noticing.”

“Noticing…” she mimics.

I make a gesture with my fingers to indicate something like snowflakes 35 falling from the sky. “You were sparkly,” I say.

Regret and a detached wonderment at my sudden inability to find the right words in my own native tongue flood my veins.

“What is sparkly?” Stocky asks.

Electric Blue Crochet utters something and they all laugh again.

“I think you are sparkly,” the taller man, wearing not quite Speedos but short trunks, says.

I smile, deciding he’ll be the cool one should this get weird for any reason.

“Where are you from?” I ask. This bold non sequitur an attempt to change the subject and also because the mystery has now been con- suming me for a good portion of my day.

Short Trunks says a name that I don’t recognize but, not wanting to appear ignorant, I nod in appreciation and hope for more clues.

“You have been there?” Stocky asks.

“No…” I can authentically and emphatically say.

Short Trunks says, “You should visit. A good place. Many freedoms there.”

This tells me nothing.

“Freedom is in the mind,” Electric Blue Crochet says.

“Oh, that’s where I left it,” I say.

Stocky laughs. 36 Short Trunks smiles widely. “A comedian,” he says, pointing at me.

My oftentimes quashed but inexplicably resilient leanings towards optimism, and survival, get me wondering if I have found my people.

“Maybe a detective,” Cream Strapless says.

“Are you police?” Stocky asks, then laughs. “I’m kidding,” he says. “No police I know are so honest as you.”

I nod and smile, trying to keep up, then hear myself say, “In high school I was voted most loyal.” This is a lie. It was summer camp and I was twelve at the time.

“Where is your home?” Short Trunks asks.

I tell them Hollywood.

“Are you famous? Let’s take a picture with the movie star,” Stocky says.

I tell them I’m not. “I work behind the scenes,” I say. “I read scripts.”

“Maybe you will make a story about our meeting,” Cream Strapless suggests.

“You never know,” I say.

Short Trunks hands his phone to the bartender and asks him to take our picture. I adjust my bathing suit top and the couples gather on either side of me. Electric Blue Crochet blows smoke at the bartender as he points the phone our way.

“Smile,” the bartender says, and I do.

37 We move away from each other and Short Trunks tells me his Insta- gram name so I can look him up and tag myself in our picture.

“Oh, good,” Electric Blue Crochet says, “then we can spy on you.”

Stocky mimes the act of looking at something through binoculars then smiles and winks at me.

Cream Strapless reaches in between us for her drink on the bar and says pointedly to me, “Your husband is missing you?”

“Boyfriend,” I say, wondering for the first time if they are married or find the institution an unnecessary noose. “He probably is.”

Electric Blue Crochet interjects, “I thought maybe he was your brother, you don’t touch too much.”

Stocky says, “I thought you are on work holiday and he is your boss.”

A prickly feeling starts to emanate from under my skin, beginning at my forehead, riding down through all my extremities, swathing me in electricity. Exposure.

I momentarily don’t know how to respond, tottering between feeling embarrassed at their observations, flattered that they were also watching me, deflated that this leap of an odyssey has taken a sink- hole of a turn, and wanting to take a drag from Electric Blue Cro- chet’s Pall Mall.

“I guess it’s a cultural thing,” I end up saying. “We like to give each other space.”

Electric Blue Crochet grunts.

38 “Oh no, that’s no good,” Cream Strapless says. “Men like to know you are interested.”

“Let her alone,” Short Trunks says to the women. Then to me, “You need some fun, you come find us.”

“Thank you for bringing us our treasure,” Stocky says. “If we see you at dinner, I will send reward.”

I tell them it was no problem.

“No problem!” they repeat back to me like a catchphrase, then say in unison what I assume is “goodbye” or “thank you” in their language but also consider that it could mean “asshole.”

I turn to leave, waving as I move off, aware of the possibility of my mostly bare body being studied by them as I go, keeping to the grassy areas so I don’t burn my feet.

Heading towards me on the path adjacent is a man holding a child. I assume by the intimacy of the situation that they are father and son though they are different ethnicities. The child is Asian, the man has strawberry blond hair. He holds the boy aggressively and as they get close enough for me to hear, says to him, “Don’t ever do that again.” The boy couldn’t have been more than two. He regards the man blankly, while sucking on his right fist, oblivious to the logic being imposed on him. He looks me directly in the eye and I seize the opportunity to try one more time. I lock eyes with the boy and hope he receives my message. His father takes note of my presence and as we near each other I say, “Don’t be mad at him.” He shoots me an exasperated look that insinuates I do not understand as we continue on our opposite journeys.

39 Back at the pool area, Michael is sitting up, spots me, and makes a gesture indicating, “Where’d you go?”

I give him an “OK” sign with my forefinger and thumb touching, making a circle, even though it doesn’t absolutely apply, nor answer his question, then point to the pool.

I approach the nearest edge and stare into the deep. Closing my eyes, I take in air, dive myself in, and swim the length of the pool underwater holding my breath. All is silent and powder blue. I am strong and capable. When I reach the end, I bob up and back into a floating position, still deafened by the water covering my ears. The loneliness and power of ultimately being a solo traveler in life, cells and dust and regrets and desire, victories, close calls just out of reach, swirl in my head, in my DNA.

I notice a splash off to the side. Michael has joined me in the water.

I consider acting like I don’t recognize him, asking his name and telling him he looks remarkably like someone I know. So I could meet him again. So I could present as different, introduce him to the person I want to be. As if this transformation is only achievable if someone else catches a glimpse of it.

He goes underwater and comes at me like a shark. I wonder if he’ll take me limb by limb, or whole. I’m ready to be put out of my mis- ery.

He pops up through the water and pulls me close.

“Where’d you go, stranger?” he says.

I adjust myself on his lap, drape my arms around his neck, the water

40 bobbing me up and down.

“Yo te veo,” I say.

“I see you, too,” Michael says.

And even though we might mean different things, I kiss him and hope for the best.

x x x

RACHEL POLLON is a writer from Los Angeles via the San Fernando Valley. Before getting down to it and focusing on the writing, she worked in both the music and television industries. Her short stories, humor pieces, and poetry have been published in The Coachella Review, The Nervous Breakdown, The Rumpus, and The Weeklings. Other works were included in The Beautiful Anthology and Teen Girls’ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny. She is @RachPo on Twitter and @rachpowills on Instagram. Her website is SeismicDrift.com.

41 Author’s Note

I am always trying to figure people out. I want to understand why we do what we do, why we are how we are. It’s a curiosity but also a survival mechanism of sorts. Know what you’re dealing with, get the lay of the land and maybe some answers.

Obviously, the personal histories, interior details, and long-held secrets of any given person aren’t always readily available. So, we take whatever clues and evidence are at our disposal to come to conclusions or use our imaginations to make them up. This story, “Yo Te Veo,” is born from that seed of motivation. This intrigue with human nature fuels most of what I write. Homo sapiens, we can be anything.

Along with all of that, this story is about being seen and seeing, coupled with the desire to connect and communicate, and the obstacles we come up against along the way. This is definitely a reoccurring theme in my writing. How we express ourselves, the hurdles of language, misunderstandings, assumptions, things left unsaid, things that shouldn’t be said but are, lies—or, as a character I’m thinking about might frame it, embellishments—and telling people what they want to hear. Throw in a little baggage from the past and it’s a wonder we ever get to know each other at all. My stories may not fall into the over-the-top, plot-twist catego- ry but they do have complications. Internal struggles tend to be quiet. Until they aren’t.

A really fun project was born from this story. In early versions I had a flashback scene. The main character recalled another time, in a similar setting, where a certain thing happened that then colored her vision for how things might go this time. It became clear that removing the flashback from this piece would benefit the story. So, I did. But I didn’t kill this darling, instead I honed and made it into its own story, narrating from a different point of view, and voilà, one became two.

This happy divergence got me thinking about linking stories either by character, setting, or theme using an aspect of a story to prompt and start a new one. Now I have a series of stories, that stand alone but also inform each other, however subtly or overtly, with the aim of building a collection.

I worked on “Yo Te Veo” on and off for a few years. Characters morphed, got quiet, shined through, made me laugh. Overall concerns and themes lurked in

42 the depths below, then breached the surface. There were moments I wasn’t sure I would get it to where I wanted it to be. But time, feedback and encouragement from others, and letting the story breathe and settle gave it the chance to say what it wanted and needed to say.

43 hybrid interview: megan cummins

Framing the Stories: If the Body structure: we know we will return to Marie’s Allows It by Megan Cummins arc after we read two of her stories, and that movement back and forth is both comforting The architecture of If the Body Allows It, Megan and exhilarating. One of the frustrations of Cummins’s stunning debut story collection, is short story collections can be a lack of for- unique: there are two sets of stories within the ward momentum: without a character to fol- one. Six stories are told in first person, from low throughout or a clear thematic structure, the perspective of a young woman named Ma- some story collections stall somewhere in the rie; these stories appear as tent poles through- middle. By establishing this frame, though, out the book, and this arc begins and ends the Cummins creates that movement forward, collection. This narrative arc moves through the ability to learn about one character over time, as we would expect to see in a novel, time, and yet we also get to explore ten other but because Marie is a writer, we also get to separate worlds, with their distinct charac- read her fiction. It becomes clear to the read- ters and narrative shapes. But all the stories, er, as the book progresses, that the other ten in the end, are connected to Marie, because stories in the collection are written by Ma- they have developed out of her imagination. rie. The relationship between Marie’s story and her fiction is subtle and nuanced; Cum- Often the connections are thematic, rather mins is clearly interested in considering the than specific. Marie’s opening story, “Heart,” layers of storytelling, the way that a writer’s begins as follows: “The doctor looks at me life makes its way into her fiction, the way and says—no fuss, no apology—that some- that the telling of a story is dependent upon one like me should never be pregnant.” In its narrator. “The Beast,” the first story we see written by Marie, we learn that the couple in the sto- There is a wonderful predictability to this ry has a “no-children clause.” Beverly says,

44 “I told myself I didn’t want children. What Megan Cummins: I wrote the first two if I couldn’t love them? Worse, what if they stories in the frame in 2015 at the Bear River couldn’t love me?” Having children—or not Writers’ Conference in Northern Michigan. having children—looms large throughout I didn’t realize until after I wrote the second the collection. In “Flour Baby,” Reggie is a story that the narrator was the same in each high schooler, forced to carry around a flour one. Once I knew that, I knew I wanted to baby for her life skills class. In “That Was Me tell more of her story. Once,” the male narrator is father to a toddler who is not biologically his son. And it is clear, by the time we get to the end of the collec- LSA: One of the conceits of the framework tion, that while Marie may not be able to be is that the first-person narrator of the six pregnant, her children exist, in the form of present-moment stories is a writer, and we these stories.... slowly learn that she is the one writing the other stories. The relationship between her —Laura Spence-Ash life and her fiction is porous. There are many moments when we can see the connections between them. As a fiction writer, what are x x x your thoughts on the role of the writer’s life Laura Spence-Ash: The frame of If the in her fiction? Body Allows It, your debut story collection, is MC: I think one of the great things about this fascinating: a series of six stories provide a question is that it’s different for each writer, scaffolding, an ongoing narrative that follows and even different in each work. Since there one character, and it provides a way to gather are similarities between me, the writer, and the other ten stories within that framework. Marie, the character, and because inevitably How did you develop this idea? Did you the question of where I am in this book was write stories to fit the framework, or did the going to be raised (by people who know me, framework come later in the process? anyway; and just because of the fact that the

45 main character is a woman who is a writer stories she writes. (read more of the essay and who is around the same age I am) I want- Q&A in CRAFT) ed explore this idea of writing about oneself through my imaginary assignment of Marie as the writer of the rest of the stories in the x x x book. Would the distance feel real? What could I learn by handing the personal aspects LAURA SPENCE-ASH’s work has appeared in One Story, New England Review, Literary Hub, of writing about the self to someone who and elsewhere. She is the Founding Editor of isn’t me? CRAFT.

LSA: The role of the storyteller in fiction can x x x be difficult to discern; the narrator is often hidden from view. Here, because you have MEGAN CUMMINS is the author of the sto- these layers of storytelling, we are able to see ry collection If the Body Allows It (University the narrator in a way that we usually can’t. of Nebraska). She is the managing editor of A How do you think that impacts the reading Public Space and A Public Space Books and lives in Brooklyn, New York. experience of the collection?

MC: My hope is that it makes the book feel, for a reader, as much like a novel as it does a story collection. I hope it feels like a whole, not just parts. I also hope, for readers, Ma- rie’s story grows in their minds as they read the stories within her frame—that those stories have an impact on her first-person nar- ration, not just the other way around, i.e. identifying her personal experiences in the

46 ariel

“Ariel” took hold of me in the first sentences, and didn’t let go even after I was done. You search the internet for guys that look like him when everybody else is asleep and think of him when you finish, the narrator says of this mark left on… is it the heart? I think it is. There’s an exculpato- ry force in each line that eventually becomes grace, by the end. Written as a confrontation with the self, the result feels like a love letter chanted in the dark by someone running for their life. Jinwoo Chong is a tremendous new talent in fiction, and I treasure this fearless story, about that love that so many of us know and haven’t told: that complicated knot made when best friends help each other ‘experiment’ with queerness, and then can’t bring themselves to admit they might have been experi- menting at love, too. I can’t wait for Chong’s debut, and the books to follow—he is one of the writers I’ve been waiting for, for my whole career.

—Alexander Chee

47 At nine years old you pin him to the soil, knees around ribs, center your two fingers together between his eyes and shout bang, bang, you’re dead, you’re fucking dead. He is writhing, trying to escape you; your sounds are the only ones reverberating off the trees. You can read a rhythm in his movements, might let him get his leg up to kick you off him but you can’t because he’s supposed to be dead—you’ve put two holes in his skull and puddled his brains in the dirt but he keeps fighting back even though it’s against the rules and you don’t know what to do about it. He’s banging his head, gasping let me go, let me go. He is the better actor and you can’t help but feel a little arrested each time you watch him, arrested enough that it takes a second to decipher his panic—you are pressing too hard on his chest and he can’t breathe. You roll off him, he scrambles onto all fours, forgetting you, yanking in his breath by desperate, irregular beats. You sit up, too scared to come closer. His cheeks are flushed, he spits white froth into the ground. You are afraid he’ll go home and tell his mother what you did. You manage to advance an inch toward him and he pounces, rolling you into a muddy patch of grass. On top of you, his hands blot the sun high above, arc downward, plunge a blade into your carotid. You spasm, making ugly, gurgling sounds, spraying blood. You shudder, lie limp under the fringed clouds, he throws his head back and roars triumph, and even weeks later you cannot decide if he’d faked the whole thing just to win.

x x x

You have never given him shit for being named after a mermaid, even though Ariel actually meant God of Lions, or something, and you were supposed to pronounce his name like a douchebag, with a long Ah, rolling the R sound on your tongue. You’ve never called

48 him that anyway; you can’t remember a time you ever did. Like the rest of him coming full-formed into your waking memory from the beginning of time, the way of your world is clear and easy: his name is Ari, he is four months older than you, two inches taller, and you spend the blazing afternoons massacring each other in ways so cruel that you’ve sometimes heard your mothers on the phone whispering nervously about it. You don’t remember when that started either.

x x x

You are boys. You fear nothing. You have two mothers, two quiet, brick houses, two wooded backyards on opposite sides of the water, two bedrooms; you share it all and wake filmed with sweat in the mornings not knowing in whose room you’d fallen asleep the night before in the glistening mouth of the summer. You love the lake, an opal-black crescent cut into the green valley, Ari’s house, perched on a hill like a bird with its delicate wings pulled around its body. You hate the cold months you spend in different cities, at different schools. You count the weeks until May, when the trees are green, when you find each other again. He waits for you in his backyard, spotting you. He nods, tosses and catches a pipe bomb in his hand, lobs it. You sprint at him, heft his entire body over your shoulder, shout give ’em the pile driver loud and macho like on WWE Raw. His thumb is in your eye, gouging gelatin and flesh matter. You drop him, sinking to your knees, bellowing, wounded, squinting through shut lids to see him perform a mercy shot to the side of your skull. You think you let him win. You always think you let him win.

x x x

You go swimming in the lake so often the color in your trunks fades

49 every summer by August. You tread water while he swings off a rope and plunges in, a tangle of limbs and ribs, surfacing. In the hot months the world moves slow—everything, the breeze off the hills, the scream of the bugs through the trees, an image frozen like the swipe of a butter knife through honey, leaving a suspended edge of bubbles behind. It rains frequently: brief, sweaty clouds that pour gallons down in a matter of minutes. They gobble up all that exists like the word of God, leaving swamps and mulched leaves in their wake. The soles of your feet and the half-moons of your fingernails stay black for three months.

x x x

You’re ten years old when he tells you his father hits his mother sometimes. On this rare morning you’ve opted to stay inside, he is draped over the side of the quilt chair in your living room by the empty, scarred fireplace, one leg hanging, bare foot sliding languidly around on the floor. He won’t look at you. It is noon, but the day feels over already, your purposes—wake, eat, find a comfortable spot in the dappled sun—duly fulfilled. He might be waiting for you to react. You think you’re supposed to pay this detail its proper attention. You should probably ask if he hits her hard, if he hits anybody else and for how long or how many times. You just don’t know how to say it. You’ve met his father only once, and what you remember about him is that you thought they looked alike, scarily so. Different from your own father, whose eyes and hands are that of a stranger and who speaks too little to be known by the small likes of you. Ari rubs a spot on his forehead, waiting, and you don’t answer him, even though you think you should. Thankful when he doesn’t bring it up again, not ever.

50 x x x

At thirteen, your body is the surface of an infant planet. You pick at red bumps where your boxers rub against your waist, drawing blood that streaks your fingertips. Your face is full and cherubic; your baby fat is malleable, like lava-lamp wax, moving aimlessly around your skeleton. Your stomach and armpits are pale and bald, and you can’t help but stare at his legs, forested with dark, curly hair, when you bake in the grass under the sun. He doesn’t want to play your games anymore. You’ve hunted Nazis, taken Troy, you’ve hacked arms and legs and heads, hung your prisoners of war. Tired of it, you suppose. He turns his head, from where you lie, his face encroached by the tall blades of green. He asks you about the pretty girl you share a Bunsen burner with at school. She’s hot. You think about her? You’re not sure if you do. You kind of like her shoulders, that weird part of her neck where the collarbone is. You shake your head. He props himself on an elbow. Never? He makes a loose fist in his hand and mimes it for you between his legs. Fuck yourself, you say. He laughs, and his hands go behind his head. After he goes home you lock your door and do it the way he did, with your fist. You give up after a few minutes. You don’t like feeling this way. You think jacking off is for pussies and divorced old men. You hate it. You throw yourself down on your bed and crush your eyes with your palms, trying to squeeze his image from your brain, thinking you can do it if you press hard enough. That night you dream about him, you can’t help it.

x x x

It kills you that he’s taller, that you are so little while he is so much more than you, that he takes up greater space in the universe and casts his shadow down on your face. You count the ways that divide

51 you: his chin, straight and angular and growing the inklings of stubble, his feet, long and slim, a leathery callous underneath. You search the internet when everybody else is asleep for guys who look like him and think of him when you finish. You are so, so fucked. But these days, you are both content with the silence. You know him, and because you know what he’d do if he knew you, really knew, you say nothing. You just keep growing, each alongside the other. Your voices drop, your faces erupt in cycles, your bodies grow hairs and oily sheens. You sleep over, but not as often, and when you do, you watch movies and bruise your thumbs playing Mario Kart in his basement and don’t really talk except to fill the empty space, when you can both be sure it doesn’t mean a thing at all.

x x x

It’s raining in the afternoon, like drumbeats above you while you both lie sprawled on his couch. You think he might be asleep, from the way his chest moves. He sits up. What? He doesn’t answer you. You ask again. He changes his mind, lies back, fake-snores, drags one arm over his eyes. You’ve been alone in the house all day and the light from the windows is bare and blue. Still he doesn’t answer, so you get up, ball your fists at your waist, hiss through your teeth to make the sound of your wakizashi blade through your scabbard. Brave Warrior, you say, you come to me to reclaim your honor. You seek re- venge for your father’s death. He doesn’t move except to dig his heel further between the cushions. You raise your arms over your head, primed. I swear to God if you touch me right now, he mumbles, sleepily, not bothering to finish.

You oblige, kneeling in front of him on the floor, and plunge your weapon into your stomach from the side. He listens to you die,

52 choking, drawing the blade across, curls his lip at the noises you make, your entrails spilling out around you. You fall sideways, you lie still. He sits up. You are hopeful, thinking he’s finally playing along. Do you think—you hear him trail off. You lift your head. Do you think it’s possible to love someone and hate them at the same time? It is not what you’re expecting, you don’t know for sure who he’s talking about, but he looks so scared of you, having said it, that you want to do the right thing. Sure, you say. It’s raining harder outside, rising to a downpour. He gets to his feet, and you follow him to the double doors leading into his backyard. You see, through the glass facing the smooth edge of the lake, a wall of falling water, clouds obscuring all but the tops of the trees. He reaches for the door, pulling it open, the sound deafens you both. When he turns around, he’s smiling. Shyly, he pulls his shirt up over his head. Do you dare me, he asks, not waiting for an answer, pulling down his shorts, then his boxers. His broad chest, ribs pressed and shadowed under goose- skin. You strip, hurriedly, surprising yourself. You don’t want him to feel self-conscious. He is the first, your first, to stand there out in the open. You can barely hold his gaze but you don’t have to for long. He takes three steps backwards, onto the patio, into the rain, drenches himself. His hair is slicked to his forehead; he combs it back with his fingers. Your eyes hang there, suspended by seconds. Then you, both of you, start running.

It’s more than cold. The rain reaches its hands down your throat and pulls out your air. You can barely see him sprinting for the trees through the yard to the edge of the water. You call his name, Ari, Ari, afraid of losing him in the grey haze. A few yards ahead you see him stopped, waiting for you, and it makes you so happy and sad that you don’t want to feel anything ever again. He puts his arms out and

53 wolf-howls up at the sky, sinks into the grass, rolling sideways down the lawn, and you tumble after. You roll to a stop, feet from the water’s edge, clung to with loose grass and mud, lying limp under the torrent. You stare at the waves cresting in the falling rain, places where the drops fall harder, more concentrated, then taper off, ghostly curtains billowing in the air where you lay witness.

A hand emerges from the white clouds and you take it, pulled to your feet, aware now of how hard he’s made you. He draws nearer with a curious look on his face, and the sight of him so close is brief- ly, shockingly new. The scar, above his right eye. Acne-pocks on his cheeks. There’s no way he hasn’t noticed by now, you think. You’re being stupid. You are risking the only thing you have that you’d kill yourself to protect. His mouth moves tenderly against yours; he tastes like the rain.

It’s over when you’ve reached for him and closed your fingers on thin air. You find him backed away, a look, fear and rapture melded like alloys of steel in his face, gone from you. Are you angry? You might be, though you can’t tell with the water falling so hard around you. Please. You take another step closer, work yourself stiff again in your hand, and it feels good but not in the way you want it to. It doesn’t take long with him watching. You finish, shaking, you can’t get enough air. You plead with him to say something, desperate, but he doesn’t. Just looks at you for a while longer, then steps closer, reaches down and wipes you clean, gently with his hands. He tilts his head sideways a degree or two as if to apologize and confirm what you fear, that he won’t ever talk to you again. His hands stay at your waist, he stares at you—you realize—because he doesn’t want to let you go and, just for a moment, you allow yourself the pleasure. But that ends, too. He heads back up the hill for the grey shadow of

54 the house up above, and, knowingly, you follow.

x x x

Two years pass before you think of him again, when you find your mother and father waiting in the kitchen for you, strange for them to be up so late; they didn’t wait for you on nights you went out with your friends. You don’t catch them staring until you come closer, not until you hear her voice do you know what it is that she knows, what they know. They ask you how far you’ve gone, and with how many guys; they need to know because your mother has read online about a shot you’re going to need at the doctor’s office. Your father puts his hand stiffly on your shoulder as if to say something kind to you but never manages to move his eyes above the collar of your shirt. You answer all of their questions, and you don’t cry, because you are too barren inside. But eventually you ask how they found out. They tell you Ari’s mother had called. And you ask what did she say? as level as you can though your voice is breaking. And your mother shakes her head, unnerved by the sound of you, says, something Ari mentioned, I think. You two were so close. You didn’t…did you?

x x x

At nineteen, you think the summers are not so gold anymore, that it has something to do with the trees, whittled, barer than you remember them, back when they rooted the ground like giants’ legs. Your mother begged you over the phone for a week, just one week, and you gave in and came home. Your father looks at you almost the same, now. You wonder, when he puts his arms around you, whether he is repulsed by the thought of you getting fucked by guys, if he can’t help but imagine it for brief, sadistic moments. You are on the couch with him while the TV blares when your mother tells you 55 Ari is back from the Gulf Coast, building houses, you remember. Won’t he have such stories, she says, and you agree. You’ve forgotten that he’d come out last year, a few weeks before he left the lake, and that for a day or two you’d made yourself be happy for him like you were supposed to be. You haven’t seen him in three years. You don’t know what he looks like anymore and you are, despite yourself, curious to know. You sit quietly in the backseat as you pull into their graveled driveway. From here you can see the old backyard, the sloping grass down to the lake. You’ve lived here all your life. It guts you to find you miss it. You spot the little girl that you’ve heard of, the half-sister, now two, tottering on the grass with Ari’s new father. You kiss a few of the older ladies who haven’t seen you in a while. You are laughing, which you didn’t think you’d do, when at last you see him, stepping shyly from around the front door. He is taller, im- possibly. He keeps touching his scalp, buzzed short, and his mother tells a funny story about meeting him at the airport and realizing he hadn’t cut his hair or beard the whole year. Like Forrest Gump, she says, amid laughter. He smiles at the ground, and you wait, familiar with the way parents talk about you right to your face. His jaw is wrapped tight with stubble, like black felt. He shakes your hand.

You step inside with him and tell him about school. He brings you a glass of yellow champagne. You talk the way you do when it’s been a year after high school, long enough, surely, that you can grasp the meanings of things like grown men. It’s harder to hear him inside with so many voices, a crowd by the vaulted windows. All this for you? He laughs. I told her ten people, tops, she never listens. He seems about to say more, and you find yourself holding your breath. You are alone in this little hallway, echoes of laughs and buzzes from the rooms beyond, black outlines of the wooded hills through the dou-

56 ble glass doors to the backyard. He looks intently at you, and even after all this time you are not used to the way he strips you bare with his heavy eyes. Not so different, now, from the way you remember. He amazes you. He always has. He is about to say something, and you will it forward, off his lips, but before he can open his mouth your mothers find you, and the change on his face is quick and cruel. He laughs when your mother asks him if he’s dating anyone, feigns mortification, mumbling something about a guy he met in the program, joking about how it’s still so new, being out, like going through puberty again. You are burning, realizing you can’t stand the way he sounds anymore. I think you’re very brave, your mother tells him. I know that’s difficult, coming clean. She catches your eye. I mean, you know, darling, don’t you. You nod. Your glass is warm in your hand. We haven’t seen you two together in years, his mother says, to both of you. He nods at this, keeps nodding at everything they say while you watch. He’d run out of things to talk about one day, maybe. He’d let it slip to his mother, what you did together that day in the rain, and regretted it, having never meant to tell anybody at all. Or maybe he’d done it to punish you. You are waiting for him to look at you again, the way he once did. And at last he does, and this time there is so little in the way his eyes fall on your face, as though he cannot tell you apart from the others, that it hits you maybe you’d made it all up and he was only ever playing pretend, too good to hurt you. You realize that it has always been this way. You want to kill him, reach inside, break ribs, tear bloody pulp from his chest by the handful. So, it feels simple, what you decide, when you grit your teeth and break your delicate little glass, foaming the yellow drink on the floor, hearing your mother’s sharp stab of breath. When you crush your fist harder, so hard that it looks like you’ve juiced a dozen raspberries in your hand.

57 x x x

He sees you only once more, soon enough afterwards that your stitches still hurt. The doctors kept you the night, you’d lost so much blood on the way to the hospital. You are leaving tomorrow; you don’t know if he’s staying on the lake for the rest of the summer. It has been so long since those days when your existence lay pinned by the change of the seasons and yet he’s here, waiting for you in his backyard like he used to, like nothing at all, watching little waves lapping on the rocks. The yard is strewn with the night’s last vestiges: folded bits of paper plates, an overflowing garbage bag propped against the big tree, Ari’s favorite tree. He nods at you and you notice for the first time that he’s nervous, genuinely concerned when he asks you okay? He’d answered only yes when you’d asked to come over, and you’d been afraid of his anger. You are ashamed of what you did. Your rage had emptied vacuum-like inside you as soon as you’d done it. He looks at your mummified hand. You wonder if you could even work this summer with it. When your blood pumps down through your arm it ends in blunt, invading pins on the tips of each finger. It kept you awake all night. You straighten your back. You remind yourself of what you’d come here to do. And it’s easy, this time, to open your mouth and ask did you tell them about me on purpose? He blinks a couple times. Tell them what? he says, and the way he says it is so quick and casual that for a moment it just annihilates you; so cruel you could die right there in front of him if you let yourself. You stop, wrap yourself tighter together. I don’t care anymore, you lie, I just want to know. Did you tell them about me on purpose? And he smiles, he actually smiles, turning his head to face the water. You still gonna keep hanging onto those little things, like all your old games? Stuff we did when we were kids? You see him take a step

58 away and you grab his wrist with your good hand, wrenching him back. He stares at you, alarmed. He tries, tentatively, to pull free. You’re hurting me, he says.

He catches you by surprise, breaking your grip, he is stronger than you. And it’s all gone wrong, you can see that now. You don’t remember any of the ways you’d promised yourself you’d be kind. You don’t see the point. Nothing? You ask him. He just keeps staring, you push him backwards, he doesn’t resist. Motherfucker, you push him again, your eyes are wet already, say something. You shove harder, and he loses his balance this time. At last he opens his mouth, says feebly: I didn’t do anything to you. You are trembling now. You did—your lips move, giving no voice for several hanging moments—everything. You ruined me. You are inches from him, now—you weren’t brave enough. You used me to become you. He is shaking his head, warning you, but his threats are empty. He doesn’t back away, doesn’t even react when you ball a handful of his shirt in your bandaged fist to keep yourself standing. Did you tell them on purpose, you say, so many times. Did you? You’ve stopped caring whether his mother can hear, you think brief- ly of the little girl, somewhere in the house. Were they watching you rip yourself to shreds in front of him? You can’t help it anymore, you are begging, screaming tell me, please, please, just fucking tell me and through it he keeps shaking his head no, crying now, dripping snot and spit, and you think you will be locked this way forever, alone with his silence. You are so far gone you can hardly understand him when at last he bursts I don’t know, I don’t remember. I don’t—

The first few drops of rain begin to fall, cool pockets of moisture on your shoulders. You let him go, because you have what you wanted, and you let him cry. For minutes he doesn’t do anything else, just rubs his eyes with his fingers like a child; you’ve never heard him

59 sob like this. You turn away, about to leave, and when you do, he panics, says your name, calling meekly for you, and still you realize you’d hear him say it forever if you could. It scares you so bad, the control you cede to him. He catches his breath, staring desolately through you. Says I’m sorry. I love you.

He waits, looking at the space between your feet. Looking so hard that you almost think he’d readied himself for it when you ratchet your fist back and punch him in his fucking face. He topples backwards into the dirt. You stop yourself going further. You’ve popped stitches, you can feel ripped flesh under your bandages. Your hand burns, as if dunked in hot wax. On the ground he cups his nose, blood seeping between his fingers. The rain is full around you. You expect him to lunge, and you jar your feet where you stand because you don’t want to get away with it, but after a minute or two he still hasn’t moved. You turn and leave, stuff your throbbing hand into your pocket; you feel almost alright about it. You don’t last. Half- way across the lawn you can’t stop yourself looking his way again and find the grass empty. You run back, over the curve of the hill, find him crouched at the edge of the lake. You watch him rub his face clean with wet handfuls. He doesn’t notice you, and the rain falls harder, dulling the sharpness of his outline. You watch him take off his shirt and wade in, dive forward into the water made choppy by the downpour. By then you’ve already reached the shore, stumbling down the incline. You soak your clothes, staggering in. You flail after him, a white peak on the surface. You panic, you forget how to swim, thrashing in order to reach him, the bed of shore underneath tapering until you float free. Ari, you choke, gasping for breath. All around you, the lake is alive under the rain; the static on its surface pounds so hard that you cannot tell the water from the sky.

60 x x x

JINWOO CHONG is currently an MFA candidate for fiction at Colum- bia University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, Tahoma Literary Review, The Forge, No Contact, and others. He serves as Fiction Editor for Columbia Journal. Twitter @jinwoochong

61 Author’s Note

At the end of 2019, I faced an uncomfortable question. I was a semester into my MFA program and had written a number of short stories that touched, only brief- ly—in the gentlest, most agreeable spots—on the kind of queer fiction I knew I wanted most to write. It was the best I could do. I was not yet out to large swaths of people in my life. I was not yet out to myself. While attending class, reading work by Justin Torres, Garth Greenwell, Alexander Chee, I felt inauthentic, writing stories that made references to ‘a boyfriend,’ a queeny neighbor, that had a small, stilted coming-out scene, and the like, without much substance behind them. I was writing about queerness in a way that might have appeared normative but was in reality as guarded as it could possibly be.

Aside from the personal goal I set for myself in this story, I needed a reason to write another queer story. I needed something that made it feel different to me than other stories I’d read that are similar, something I think about every time I try something new. It was important to me that “Ariel” portrayed its narrator’s queerness as more internal than external. The rage he feels toward the story’s end is not an outright anger at being outed (his parents and community take the news better than many closeted young people see today) but rather because Ari has forced him, unwittingly, to confront his own identity, and taken, more or less, the easier way out for himself. I struggled over the line, “you used me to become you,” thinking it too on-the-nose. I found it to be the trickiest part about dabbling with the political—the tendency to over-explain.

I wrote “Ariel” over the span of a month once I decided, concretely, to sit down and write it; the plot and characters arrived easily because it is, in some ways, an idealized scenario I’ve carried with me long before I ever wrote, something I think a lot of people visualize for themselves. Falling in love with one’s best friend felt beautiful and simple. I’d adopted sparse prose, perhaps as a defense mechanism, in my writing before this, and I needed a place to put my exaggerated sentences. A goal was to make every inch of this story something I found beautiful. I believe most stories begin with at least some goals, even if they are implicit or unspoken.

62 revise like a scientist: a method approach to finding the right treatment for your story

There’s consensus among writers that writ- Adopting the scientific method as a frame- ing is revision. But that doesn’t mean we work for writing revision involves applying a don’t struggle with the complexities of the series of steps that allow the writer to assess task when we’re in the middle of drafting a a piece of fiction, to experiment with add- story or novel. It’s challenging to overcome ing new information or new thinking about the reluctance to edit your writing, diving a story, and it provides a way to analyze and into the work of cutting, reworking, and respond to feedback acquired from trusted rewriting with abandon. Unless you have a readers. Like a scientist, the writer can back strategy. up and repeat the steps at any point during the process. It’s an iterative approach. Ezra Pound once advised, “Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an ad- vertising agent for a new soap.” Which I take Your Hypothesis to mean, don’t settle for merely cleaning and polishing your first draft in an effort to sell Before the renowned painter, Georgia it to yourself. Rather, consider taking a me- O’Keeffe, would put her work into the thodical approach to re-visioning the pages world, she’d sit with it and decide for herself before you. With deliberateness, take time to its strengths and flaws: “I have already settled dig deeper, to find the heart and soul of your it for myself so flattery and criticism go down piece. the same drain and I am quite free.” O’Keeffe may have been trying to protect herself from

63 the inevitable stings that come when artists In her book Making a Literary Life: Advice for share work, or perhaps she was merely look- Writers and Other Dreamers, she proposes tack- ing for validation of the work as she saw it. ling “troublesome, chaotic, emotion-packed, Either way, adopting her exercise of evalu- repetitive manuscripts” with an exercise ating a work with candor before it is ever called, “What I Have and What I Need.” Page shared with other people provides the writer by page, focused on character, plot, theme, with a helpful path forward in revision. and more, she recommends laying out in frank terms a map for revision. If you’re honest with yourself and concede that your protagonist’s emotional arc is flat, or your setting does nothing to influence Time to Experiment narrative drive, or your story structure is confusing—then therein lies your starting When I work with writers on a developmen- point for further investigation. Revise with tal edit of their story or novel, I prepare them the emotional craft of fiction in mind. Fi- in advance that while I might be able to show nesse the setting details. Reconsider your them the vulnerable areas of the manuscript story structure. and make suggestions, I may not offer them the exact right revision proposition. Why? There’s no cause to worry that using this sci- Because only the writer can know if a par- entific framework will inhibit you. Instead, ticular solution to a story problem resonates. trust that your educated guesses about the And the only way to find the right solution is state of your draft will open your mind to to experiment. creative experimentation. Jeanette Winter- son once said, “Discipline allows creative This is your time to take risks. Be ambitious. freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.” You can always refer back to your saved first draft if need be. Though in my experience, Another way to test your assumptions about you won’t need to. Once distracting material your draft comes from writer and former book is removed from scenes, characters may well reviewer for The Washington Post, Carolyn See. leap off the page and your central conflict

64 may become more evident to readers. Other LYNNE GRIFFIN is the author of the acclaimed times, deleting extraneous writing will show novels Life Without Summer (St. Martins Press, you exactly what it was masking—a lack of 2009), Sea Escape (Simon & Schuster, 2010), tension or a tired plot device. Either way, ed- and Girl Sent Away (SixOneSeven Books, iting on a macro level is an essential step in 2015). She’s also the author of the nonfiction book Negotiation Generation (Penguin, 2007). the revision process. If it uncovers new prob- Her short stories and essays have appeared lems, be grateful rather than discouraged. in Solstice; Chautauqua; The Drum Literary While you may need to add more scenes or Magazine; Salon; Brain, Child; Library Journal; develop new plotlines, each time you revise Fiction Writers Review; Psychology Today; and you will be getting closer to finding the heart more. of your story. Lynne teaches writing at GrubStreet Writers, After completing a revision related to char- the independent writing center in Boston. She acter, plot, setting, and dialogue, sometimes has acted as the Prose Writer-in-Residence at a nip and a tuck is all that’s needed. Remove the Chautauqua Institution, Visiting Scholar of unnecessary backstory and lose gratuitous Education at Wheelock College Singapore, adjectives and adverbs. Take out passages and taught writing at national conferences such as the Key West Literary Workshop, the Boston that slow the pace and justify each metaphor Book Festival, Association of Writers & Writ- and simile. Get out of your character’s head ing Programs, and GrubStreet’s Muse and the and let him take new action. This thorough Marketplace conference. Lynne is a develop- cleaning of your manuscript can make a big mental editor for fiction and nonfiction projects. difference. Toni Morrison once claimed that To learn more about her work, visit her web- changing a handful of words in one of her site at LynneGriffin.com or follow her on twitter manuscripts changed the entire story.... (read @Lynne_Griffin. more in CRAFT)

x x x

65 caprice

They roam the woods with abandon, these two children. The boy and the girl laugh over nothing and take turns cradling the .22 rifle.

He shows her how to shoot birds. It is her daddy’s rifle, but she lets him have the first kill. A chickadee falls in mid-song. She takes the rifle and shoots two more. He takes a turn. By the time they leave the woods over a dozen fat little songbirds lie dead on the forest floor.

II.

She is a very smart young woman; very free. She knows the world is a rough place, and she is drawn to its stink. She roams the big city night to nibble on its creatures and from time to time gets bruised.

On a hot summer night she smokes so much marijuana that she falls into a stupor and then a deep sleep in her ratty Lower East Side railroad flat. The last thing she sees before her eyes close is the fire escape window opened for air.

That night a man comes through that window. When he is done with her and the hospital and the police are done with her, she comes home to a scratchy dawn and sits looking out the fire escape window. Pigeons gurgle at her and stare from the other side of the glass. She thinks they are looking at her as if she is crazy or something. Her mouth is so bruised it has swollen up so she looks like a fish....

—Jane Baskin

66 the portrait of venus

The right side of my body is out of control. I am a monster.

I made my first suicide pact with myself when I was sixteen, the year my mother could no longer tell me, it’s just in your head, you’re such a lovely girl. I was standing in front of a full-length mirror and my gaze traced the outline of my legs, sizing them up. My stomach filled with sharp stones.

When I can’t wear skinny jeans. When people can tell. That’s when I’ll do it.

But even as my desperate feelings congealed and my yearning for extinguishment blos- somed into that first concrete plan, I knew I was lying to myself, or at least exaggerating. I felt pretty good and liked being alive. Besides, I could still wear all sorts of shoes. Mules, flip-flops, boots, slingback wedges, loafers, cha cha heels. Size seven.

By senior year in high school I had to stop wearing skinny pants and start buying two different sized shoes.

How far away I feel from my symmetrical childhood when I used to sit on the couch with my mom and watch reruns of In Search Of. Leonard Nimoy narrated it and the best epi- sodes were the ones that explored places like the peaty soup of Loch Ness, deep and cold Lake Okanagan, and the dripping black vegetation of the Louisiana Bayou on the hunt for serpents and man-beasts.

I have a condition. It hit with puberty. Limbs are affected first, you see. And eventually tumors grow, mostly in the abdomen. Piles of plastic surgery handouts fill my drawers. I have spent hours reading about procedures like suction-assisted lipectomy, excision of ex- cessive skin and subcutaneous tissue, and contouring or reducing facial bones....

—Andrea Eberly

67 viduy

September

Dear Sasha.

You start the email again every fall. It’s not your only ritual. Every year, as the Jewish New Year approaches, you also borrow the book by that new age rabbi, the one about how re- pentance is cyclical as the seasons. Your life is shaped like a spiral, says the book, and every Yom Kippur you find yourself somewhere that is at once brand new and also the same place you’ve always been. You consistently read half of it and then grow overwhelmed by scope. You’re bettering automatically these days, a little cleaner since last year, ruddier and more veg- etal. Your neck loosens, older, at attention. You’ve heard about queer time, how it doesn’t move in a straight line and how you won’t age in the same shape as anyone else, and you’re delighted to believe it. You’re always older than people think you are. Queer time, you say over and over, like that, too, is a prayer,

You notice things: the trees shyly offering their first several leaves to the wind. You crane toward absolution from the hips like trying to will a bowling ball out of the gutter. It’s almost Yom Kippur but you’re not there yet, not past the reckoning. You’re just here with your coffee at the kitchen counter and your open laptop, the letter you start inadequately and have barely any intention of sending. Dear Sasha, it begins, and every time, just invok- ing your old friend’s name tightens your bones like a pullcord straight through the ribs. Dear Sasha. You wonder whether writing those two words might be growth enough for one year. What’s one more in the scheme of nine? Dear Sasha. I left you, after all. I doubt my name finds its way into your mouth anymore....

—Temim Fruchter

68 natalya

MEDICAL EXAMINER REPORT

OFFICIALS PRESENT AT EXAMINATION:

None.

When I read your name on the toe tag, I don’t believe it right away. Then, as the diener and I heft your body onto the examination table, I see your ankle tattoo. The Cyrillic letters of Artur’s name have turned blurry and gray, but they’re still in the same place. I urge the diener to go home. I insist I can do this by myself; I have before. It’s late so it doesn’t take much convincing.

Once alone, I lean in close to your face. I open one eye with a blue-gloved hand and stare at the dilated pupil. I press my fingers into your inflated cheeks. Through the excess tissue, I feel the familiar shape of your face in my hand.

“You can’t choose the things you remember,” my mother told me one afternoon, while she cleaned and gutted a fish in the white clay mouth of my grandmother’s kitchen sink. “The important things will find you.”

I remember this: the sharp scent of raw fish that stuck to mother’s hands for the rest of the evening; the seaside town in rain, smelling rotten and alive at the same time; the smudges in your eyeliner as we stood under the awning of a shuttered convenience store, me holding the bag of onions my mother forgot, you with the slimmest cigarette I had ever seen, like a lollipop stick between your lips....

—Puloma Ghosh

69 “ ______“

The more they said his name, the quicker it withered and left her. It started the afternoon he was murdered. Lourdes was complaining about the dirty dishes he left in the sink. He was twenty-four and still giving her reasons to complain. She mentioned it to her prima on the phone, and when she said his name she stuttered. The first letter choked up in her throat, but she managed. How odd, she thought. That was the beginning of doubt, a pre- sentiment that tomorrow morning would flourish into a street corner of mourning flow- ers.

She called the bodega, where he worked. He often brought eggs, milk, and bread home with him. But lately he’d been buying the wrong brand of bread, another sore contention between them.

“He left like an hour ago, said he was bringing bread upstairs to you,” Miguelito the bode- guero said.

Lourdes tried to say his name but she stuttered, more violently this time than the last. She settled for calling him “ese muchacho,” and hung up in frustration. She put her fingers to her lips, her concern fully crystallized now. She was struggling to say her son’s name and could not figure out why. She could not know that the vecinos downstairs were already passing the story from apartment to apartment. His name flowing from lip to lip as the rumor ballooned with the air of sorrow and conspiracy. His body had not lain dead in the lobby for an hour and already half the building knew.

Outside her window was another summer day of July 1992. A car passed by blasting meren- gue. A couple of kids made circles around a broken fire hydrant. They shrieked and yelled after each other loud enough that Lourdes could hear them on the fourth floor...

—Alejandro Heredia

70 buying a house ahead of the apocalypse

• Scour the online listings daily.

• Find a house ahead of your fortieth, ahead of your immanent doom.

• Never mind that a house is an investment, a belief that, on the whole, things will get better.

• Find a house on a hill, set back from the road, a sturdy brick rancher or a quaint bun- galow that needs work.

• Search outside of Richmond, not too far from the city, since your daughter’s still finishing art school here. Keep up your commute, rising before dawn to burn up the road to Williamsburg. Never mind the long drive, the light you left on, the broke toilet your landlord won’t fix, which is always, always running.

• Put a thumb on the scale for any location named for (but not in truth near) a broad body of water. Appomattox Drive. James River Road. Chesapeake Way. Try again for that gated subdivision with the outcast booth and zebra-ed boom barrier lowered. That extra if flimsy arm of protection that could soon shield you (and your daughter) from the flaring world. Never mind the dark-skinned guard who wouldn’t even let you in when you dug deep into your purse but still failed to find the flyer for the so-called open house.

• Catch the older lady at the credit union, the one with the smoldering accent, the one who makes the loans. The one who reminds you of your own mother, if your Ma had been brown and Latin, instead of black with a Uhura-do, hailing from Carolina....

—Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

71 jump!

For a while, it only amounts to simple things. Father plays practical jokes on daughter so often that daughter expects shit to happen at any given moment. For instance, father often kicks the back of girl’s knees when she’s leaning on one side, so that she buckles from her own weight. Funny. Father gives daughter wasabi instead of green tea ice cream. Hilarious, though the first time, girl was six and spice was pain. Father pushes fully clothed daughter into a pool and barely says sorry, the word squeezed between laughter. Girl is soaked and totally angry. These things are easily fixed. Tongue can be soothed with actual ice cream. Clothes can be wrung and thrown into a dryer. A banged-up knee only leaves a bruise.

Girl is twelve going on thirteen when, at a family gathering, father gets rowdy after many rounds of Go-Stop, and gathers up all his energy to heave girl onto her aunt’s kid-friendly trampoline. Father does this because he is still strong, and girl is still light enough to be thrown. As her body is falling, girl splits into three.

The first tumbles onto the trampoline and, mid-bounce, sees the sky. The second drags her foot on grass and trips, cracking her skull on the steel frame of the trampoline. The third sees what happens to the second and, while in her father’s grip, turns around to reach for her father’s hand.

Girl’s head against the metal frame makes a tremendous sound. At first, father laughs. Then he sees how daughter cannot stand up, body flopping on yellowed grass. The whites of her eyes are swarmed with red. Father tells the other relatives that daughter is fine, she just needs to go home and lie down. Then father takes her to the car, then to the ER.... (read more in CRAFT—coming January 8, 2021) —Michelle Go-un Lee 72 the angel finger

Most nights, Morgan lies awake thinking about cutting off her sister’s finger. The extra one on Angela’s left hand, the one she calls her angel finger. It could be said these thoughts make Morgan a bad person. Sinning in thought is still sinning, her Sunday school teacher would say—but she can’t be sure. It’s true, sometimes she has trouble not thinking about the devil. Sometimes she has trouble not thinking about all kinds of things she isn’t supposed to think about, things like cutting off her sister’s angel finger. As if Angela even makes good use of it. As if Angela spends her days wandering about touching peasants with it to heal their leprosy or plague. Morgan isn’t especially well-read with her Bible but she knows most of the key stories, including the one where the mother begs Christ to heal her demon-possessed daughter, and Christ agrees with her that yes, even dogs deserve scraps from the table. It isn’t hard to imagine Angela stretching out her angel finger to a dying child, deigning her thin nail to be nibbled free of a miracle.

Their father is a rural pastor, though not a particularly good one. He requires a full script of his sermons be tucked somewhere on the altar or he forgets them entirely, lifting his arms up before the small congregation and devolving impromptu into random hymns, hoping to pass the moment off as divine inspiration rather than poor mortal planning.

Morgan’s fairly certain her soul is headed for eternal damnation. She can’t do anything right. Mrs. Bunting, the church lady with the gummy eyes and graying teeth, says so all the time. Shakes her head and mutters about PKs, what a shame it is that such a fine preacher, a man born to Show The Way, should have a daughter with such a devil’s streak. A daughter who once dared the Johnson boy to climb onto the church roof, abandoning him there when he started weeping. A daughter who’s been known to slip notes, tell lies, and lay traps. A daughter without any angel in her at all.... (read more in CRAFT)

—K.C. Mead-Brewer

73 the division of bad news

We were not exactly sad when we received the call. Neither were we happy; in that delicate space between hope and the hum of everyday life, we were a number of different things: digging out weeds, chopping carrots with dull knives, knitting by a fire that kept dying out, dutiful fingers interlacing threads that would become a scarf or a sweater. On a bright summer day, we might not have been at home for the call, the sound of the phone echoing through the halls and reaching no one, but there weren’t many bright days in Spring Mountain. Our lives were mostly cold: our bare feet were strangers to fields of grass, our pale shoulders never sun-kissed. So we villagers were in the middle of a meal: a roast and some veggies, smoked fish and boiled eggs. Or maybe we were about to enjoy a slice of pie, cheeks pinked by the warmth of the oven, butter and sugar about to coat our tongues, when suddenly we heard the ring.

x x x

As it turns out, it was a bright summer day, the first blue one in many years. The clouds that kept the seeds sleeping lazily under the earth’s crust had been scared away by a daring sun, radiating more warmth than I knew what to do with. As I made my way to work that morning, I felt a slight pressure on my brow and realized I couldn’t look up—the light was like a heavy hand directing my gaze to the ground. Over on Main Street, Billy Mayer stood on a staircase, a baseball cap covering his bald spot. He held a handmade sign that read, “Ice Cream today,” and placed it over the one that read “Firewood.” I quickened the pace. I took a shortcut through some backyards and walked into a side street to the parking lot, which was empty for a Monday....

—Flávia Stefani

74 my father’s wife

My father stood in the doorway behind his mail-order bride holding back Boris, who barked like he always did. The new wife wore blue work pants, runners, and an enormous winter coat. She had cropped black hair and small uneven teeth. She looked at us, pointed to her nose and said, “Ma Ma.” My sister put her finger in her mouth and I turned back to Snakes and Ladders, which my sister was losing. She was six and I was eleven.

x x x

Our house changed with the new wife’s arrival. Piles and stacks grew along the walls— boxes of salt, newspapers, cans of corn, sacks of rice, empty bottles, bags of discarded clothing, flattened cardboard and metal, shoes. The air was different. The new wife was clean but not scrubbed, clothed but not dressed. Her smells were not ones I associated with freshness and beauty, but nor were they the odours of neglect we were used to. It was efficiency, perhaps. Clean without frills. Nothing extraneous. My mother had smelled warm. Lavender hand cream, stale coffee and buttery fry-ups. Burnt toast. On bad days the warmth turned to heat. The musk of soft rot. On bad days my sister and I rolled the dice for her, choosing the ladder over the snake, willing her to climb and win. I smell her sometimes still. In a grocery store queue, an apartment lobby, a friend’s backyard. It catches me sideways.

Every evening the new wife set a bowl of rice on the table. Rice and watery soup with greens she’d foraged. Breakfast was the same. Soup and rice. She and my father didn’t share a language or culture, but one complemented the other. She was starting over even as he was. She had a history. These things I only realize with hindsight. I remember asking my father why he’d brought home this woman who spoke almost no English and pulled weeds from the ditch for our soup pot....

—Meg Todd

75 body language

My mother has become a shadow. I wake to find her leaning over me, a dark blur, the edges of her just visible in the thin morning light that filters into the tent. It feels early, but I can hear the cicadas singing outside. My mother is searching for something. She leaves clothes and bags strewn around the small space. It is difficult for her to hold onto things these days. She has to concentrate, or solid objects slip through her hands as if she is made of smoke.

“Ma,” I say. “Ma, stop it.”

My mother turns, I think. Her shape is indistinct as she reaches out and pats my sleeping bag. It could be reassurance. Her way of saying good morning, or telling me to go back to sleep.

“What are you looking for?”

My shadow-mother gathers up an object and withdraws before I can see what she has taken. Her speed surprises me. In the last few years I grew used to her complaints about her aching limbs and creaking joints. She hated any sign that she might be slowing down. My mother has never been patient with anyone, least of all herself.

“Ma?”

I pull on my boots and duck out of the tent. Silver ferns and nīkau palms give way to thick- er beech forest around us; we are alone in the secluded campground. The sun is just breaking out above the trees. I shade my eyes, scanning the clearing for my mother, and notice a small area of flattened grass by the tent that marks where she slept. She no longer feels the cold. Even back at her house, she has chosen the porch and given me her bedroom.... (read more in CRAFT)

—Tian Yi

76 about the finalists

JANE BASKIN is a writer and social worker living in New England, who has spent much of life working with the mad, the bad, and the barely believable. She is the author of Jane of the Jungle, published in 2011.

ANDREA EBERLY’s short stories appear in journals such as Southwest Review, Witness, and Bellevue Literary Review. She is the recipient of Carve’s 2016 Premi- um Edition Contest and december’s 2019 Curt Johnson Prose Award. Andrea lives in Seattle and is currently working on a novel set in late ‘90s Germany.

TEMIM FRUCHTER is a writer who lives in Brooklyn. She loves saturated color and believes in queer possibility. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland, and is the recipient of fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Vermont Studio Center. She is a 2020 Jane Hoppen Resident at Paragraph Workspace for Writers and a recipient of a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foun- dation Writer’s Award.

PULOMA GHOSH has an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College, where she was the Spring 2020 Teaching Fellow. Her stories have been finalists for con- tests at CRAFT, Ploughshares, and Meridian. Her work has appeared in The Cantabrigian, Another Chicago Magazine, and Noble / Gas Qtrly. She lives in Chicago, IL.

ALEJANDRO HEREDIA is a queer Afro Dominican writer and community organiz- er born in Santo Domingo and raised in The Bronx. He is the winner of the Golden Line Press 2019 fiction chapbook contest, selected by Myriam Gurba. His work has been featured in Auburn Avenue Magazine, La Galeria Magazine, and No Dear Magazine. His chapbook You’re the Only Friend I Need, a collection of stories about immigration, queerness, and friendship, is forthcoming Spring 2021.

JOCELYN NICOLE JOHNSON is author of My Monticello, five stories and a novella, forthcoming from Henry Holt in the fall of 2021. Johnson’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, Guernica, and elsewhere, and was anthologized in Best American Short Stories 2018, edited by Roxane Gay, who called Johnson’s selection “one hell of a story.” A veteran public-school art teacher, Jocelyn lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia. Learn more at jocelynjohnson.com. 77 MICHELLE GO-UN LEE is currently a fiction candidate at the Litowitz MFA+MA at Northwestern University. She was born and raised in Southern California, and currently resides in Chicago.

K.C. MEAD-BREWER lives in Ithaca, NY. Her fiction appears in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Joyland Magazine, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Tin House’s 2018 Winter Workshop for Short Fiction and of the 2018 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. For more information, visit kcmeadbrewer.com and follow her @meadwriter.

FLÁVIA STEFANI is a writer and translator from Brazil, currently living in San Fran- cisco. She is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from UNLV and is a contributing editor for Witness Magazine.

MEG TODD is a Canadian writer of fiction. Her work has been shortlisted and longlisted for the CBC short story prize (2017, 2019, 2020) and published in various literary magazines, including Prairie Fire, Grain, PRISM, TNQ, and EVENT. She lives on the West Coast.

TIAN YI lives and works in London, where she is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing. Her short fiction has appeared inVisual Verse and The Fiction Pool. Her twitter is @tianyiwriting.

78 short fiction prize

Thank you to every writer who entered and congratulations to our winners, finalists, longlisters, and honorable mentions!

The CRAFT Short Fiction Prize is an annual contest, returning each year in March.

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