Amy Stuber
The Clean
From a distance, the Kilgour brothers look exactly like late-middle-aged used-to-be-but-still-are musicians disembarking from a small plane in the middle of a Kansas farm field at 10 AM. I'm in a...
The Strange Fauna of the Suburban Pacific
Bre was a plain girl who did not stand out and did not try to stand out. Yet a small group of seventeen-year-old boys had made her the focal point of their harassment. The boys were exactly what...
Margaret Atwood in Paradise
In paradise, they are forever putting on makeup and sweating out of it. My life at home doesn't contain tropical birds, rats, crashing surf, or crabs exploring toenails. Margaret Atwood is my...
Anarchism is not Enough
They let the house get taken. A juniper grew as tall as the eaves and started pushing at one of the gutters, rhododendrons stopped differentiating between porch (for people) and shrubs (other...
Picturebook
Marguerite lives in a tent in the side yard of an apartment building where five people she knows share a studio. Marguerite's first child explodes, the doctor tells her to consider a C-section, and...
American Prospects
June and Phil travel over an hour to June's sister Irene's annual Halloween party, dressed as a horse and a shirtless Vladimir Putin, because Irene was insistent June wouldn't leave the house after...
Edward Abbey Walks Into A Bar
Someone you've been dating for a year calls you and says he's going to kill himself. We listen to David Bowie's "Starman" on cassette, share a giant Dr Pepper, and shoot squirrels with a BB gun. We...
I’m on the Side of the Wildebeest
I'm watching bats circle through the dusk around the Grand Canyon when the bank calls to ask for $1,279 in purchases. At eighteen, I rode my bike in the dark drunk, darting between cars, and fucked...
All My Pretty Ones
In 1987, you could purchase a plane ticket from Boston to Kansas City over the phone using the memorized numbers of your grandmother's American Express. The cab bumps up against the curb at the...
Soft at the Edges, Going Bad
The woman's parrot, Constantine, is in a cage on my lap because Ellen is persuasive and needy, and his supplies are covered in muslin because I like Ellen. The older woman next to me moves back a...
The Great Plains
Liam, who has grown up in a trailer with his dad and sister, is watching YouTube videos of people breaking into dead malls. Liam's sister Estelle gives him a ride to the mall, but sings the whole...
Corvids and Their Allies
Sasha Morningstar changed his name to Michael on his eighteenth birthday and was driven across the country by strangers. Hannah née Moonbeam Lark was nothing then, but as he grew, he climbed the...