American Short Fiction

Publishing exquisite fiction since 1991.

Rebecca Markovits

Bigfoot Catches a Show

I first met Lucy Harrison at an artist residency fifteen years ago, when I still fashioned myself a poet, and, suffering from a newly broken heart, spent most of my month there memorizing the saddest poems I could bring myself to find in the residency’s extensive collection of very sad poems. Ultimately, this had the effect of convincing me I would never be quite a great poet, and by the time I left behind the New England mansion, I had also left behind poetry, or writing it, anyway. Lucy … [Read more...] about Bigfoot Catches a Show

Young Soldier’s Diary, May 1431, A Knot of Towers That Was a Church Before the War

News traveled quickly in the days we were stationed in Rouen, and word of her military successes and her spiritual calling preceded her by many months; it was as if horses ran faster, and people wrote and spoke more clearly then, aided somehow from above. I believed in such heavenly intervention then, and I still do now. It was our biggest difference, Frémin and I, for Frem was the rare soldier who didn’t believe in God; it was clear he too fought for love, for life, for land, but never for the … [Read more...] about Young Soldier’s Diary, May 1431, A Knot of Towers That Was a Church Before the War

Intimacy

If Bade chilled, took one two three seconds to look, he’d see that no part of that day made brain. First, he slept through his alarm, which meant he missed his carpool. Then his Uber driver, a man who was all teeth and forehead, lacked the vim necessary to ply Lagos traffic. Of course the AC was faulty, and with the windows down (Oga, I hope you don’t mind) they slugged from Surulere through Eko Bridge to Victoria Island, danfo fumes choking and trailer horns grating; two hours, for a journey … [Read more...] about Intimacy

Issue 82

ISSUE 82 Featuring new stories by Lydi Conklin, Annie Liontas, Kyle McCarthy, Carrie R. Moore, KJ Nakazawa-Kern, and Colleen Rosenfeld. Lydi Conklin, "Sorry about the Wolf" I’d only hung out with Ana and Margarita a few times, and always with Rogelio, but I hated the way they talked, their eyes flitting back and forth between them like the mud-colored lizards hunting for flies in our yard. The two of them seemed to be in on a joke about life that I was too stupid to understand. But my … [Read more...] about Issue 82