He Named Himself

Lyrebird, rumpled Australian ground fowl. He sings the song of a gas-powered…

Bedlam

The bed we bought from Sears, a sale, a snip, and it became to us the all but boundless sea, an…

An Accounting of Small and Large Catastrophes

After I sold the horse that I had spent years training…

In Lost Time

The first thing you hear your father do after your mother leaves is laugh so…

So Long, and Thanks for All the Memories

Paula’s got it down to a fine art now — an entire…

Things

written by Damien Laughlin | illustrated by Vaso Michailidou

Lucid Dreams

Cupboards led to Narnia, and nobody told us otherwise. We hid there and basked in the…

Sophie

Sophie dropped the sentence into the room like flour. It formed a thick, white cloud that, once…

Anger Dragon

And then, I heard the craaack it made, saw the ugly “V” in the molding below. I held the…

Her Son

She knew from the feeble knock on the door that her son was home to stay. At least until he…

The Weary Trichologist

The sense of doubt that wells up in me is almost enough to make me ask her…

Divine Valley

Over time, the few snakes in the surrounding farms become many snakes, as beds of them…

Preschool Remembered in Hashtags

Adults spoke through hissed genealogies, the early tantra of tongues…

The Carpet

The man paced back and forth in the kitchen, amazed at what he’d seen. He’d been dining in…

The Force That Drives

I’ll tell you about when your daddy played a trick on me. He hid in my closet. I…

Susquehanna

That the river and nothing other took my brother stayed stuck with me. River water can…

Mike Doesn’t Seem to Want to Join the Other Dogs

Gotham

There are only so many ways to express the joys of fatherhood after writing “From Macho Man to…