The first time I saw the witch, I asked for a new body.   I could not stand my body. I could not stand my thighs and crooked teeth that rubbed together like uneven beach stones caught in waves; hair curled and oily against my face; this misshapen frame. I asked her to give me [...]

It was a game my older brother made up and we only played it once when we couldn’t find Monopoly. “That game sucks butt anyway,” Jamie said, “I have a better idea.” We were in the kitchen. He pulled a knife from its home in the drying rack. It made a shling sound. “Give me [...]

Last week’s hobgoblins had been wayward enough, but the booted cat—with its shape-shifting trickery—was even more disturbing for rewarding its lazy human for simply agreeing not to drown it. At tale’s end, the least sensible of a miller’s sons wins the hand of a princess on little more than a cat’s cunning and the young [...]

            kée píi’nekeyneks: Let us (swallow) take each other in. We shall be                        lit by a morning like music: I step                                  into a field & here is where            it happened            another boy held                        dragged by the cock & his mother was only just beginning to sleep to a silence that night made from a [...]

The Parable of the Air-House When the Hatted Man passed through our gates, his stovepipe’s crown looked like the chimney of our synagogue (when viewed from the tree line past town). His jacket was blacker than what I see when I imagine piano keys. We gathered wherever he chose to stand: by Math-Less Mendel’s shop [...]

The Leaf Girl married in the fall, when her hair was mostly blood-rose red, but brown at the roots and yellow at the curled, arthritic ends. Most of the village came to the wedding in the forest, braving the dagger-pronged pine cones on the soles of their best shoes in order to see the ceremony. [...]

She lies on Friedrich’s ear. Her husband is asleep, breathing heavily, loud rumbling snores that echo from his chest. She kisses his helix, her pillow, curled under her head and wishes him, “Goodnight.” When he does not respond, she kisses him again, small bird pecks, before rolling on her back, her feet resting safely on [...]