Two of my uncles hoisted the balikbayan box out of the truck bed. I heard the package hit the ground even though I was ten meters away, sitting on the porch, where I always sat. My seven younger cousins played with marbles in the shade, but when my uncles waved them over, they raced across the driveway to swarm the gift like moths around a fire. My aunts and uncles tore the tape away and removed a dozen toys, each wrapped in colorful cardboard and pristine plastic, jammed between hand-me-down ... [READ MORE]
NOTEBOOK
The 2021 Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize Winners
We are delighted to announce that our brilliant judge, R.O. Kwon, has selected the winners of this year's The Halifax Ranch Fiction Prize. We consider it our privilege to have spent time with so many terrific submissions—thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work! Winner: Caroline Schmidt for “Particular Luck” Of Schmidt's story, Kwon writes, "I was especially moved by the physicality of grief in “Particular Luck,” its knowledge of how we are tied, in joy as in sorrow, to ... [READ MORE]
Matt’s
Day after the school shooting in Florida, my son’s elementary practices lockdown. When I pick his five-year-old self up in the parking lot crowded with parents I don’t breathe. I’ve been drinking, is why, so I hold my body in my mouth. “Noel and his partner are in town, we’re meeting for dinner at Matt’s,” I say to my boy, loading him in the car. Strapping him down. “We're good at traveling together,” my brother tells me at the restaurant. He takes a bite from his Juicy Lucy. “We're ... [READ MORE]
Rockaway
In May, Amy called to say she was squatting in the caretaker’s quarters of the Rockaway Motel. She needed her car; she wanted to sell it. When I pulled her old Volvo wagon into the dusky parking lot, I could see it had once been a nice getaway: empty pool in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by a clutch of cabins. Thick stands of pitch pine protected the motel from the sea. The caretaker’s quarters were cavernous and shadowy, a paneled welcome desk near the door. I shouldn’t have been ... [READ MORE]
The Chimp
Down slid the chimp. Not quite like a fireman, more hand-over-hand because the pole inside the four-foot-wide acrylic cylinder running floor-to-ceiling in the middle of my apartment had branches. Surely, shit piled on the floor below – the chimp was good at tearing off his diaper – but the beauty of it was I couldn't see it or smell it, and the rent was great because the chimp's owner kept the top and bottom apartments of the triplex. You'll never meet your neighbor, said the realtor, but his ... [READ MORE]
Days of Craving
American Short Fiction · Days of Craving by Elsa Court When I flew back to New Haven the day after the Texas wedding, my landlady’s house had acquired the smell of homecoming. She—my landlady—poked her head through my bedroom door and asked: “Are you in love?” rolling her eyes up and wide like a cartoon character. I shook my head. “Oh,” she said and took my little present, a miniature bronze fawn polished from a succession of past owners, surprisingly weighty. She started down the stairs as ... [READ MORE]