By: Michael Simon There is a sound not unlike thunder echoing outside. No, more frequent than thunder. Lighting is not present with its partner today, so there’s no way to pinpoint the location of the crater it will cause; one…

By: Alan Swyer The first time Levinson went to a four-star restaurant in Paris, he was treated exactly like what he was: a twenty-year-old from an industrial town in New Jersey who looked and felt completely out of place. He…

By: Neha Sharma Sarika arrived with her hair tied into two braids with bright pink ribbons, a sack with printed orange marigolds and her skin covered with recently dried up chicken pox. More than a few strands of hair stuck…

  By: Gaither Stewart The last time I saw Algodón was in the instant before the medics pulled the sheet over his face. From my fourth floor balcony across the narrow street, even in the faint late-night illumination I could…

By Karthik Shankar The alarm clock announced itself with a rattling ring. My mind had already switched itself on fifteen minutes earlier but my body wasn’t ready to purge itself of the remnants of my daily slumber. I got up…

By: Hannah Thurman Month 1: Olivia realized, for the first time, how quiet everything was. She had just gotten home from her job at the lab, stepping carefully around the gouges in the lawn left by the renovators’ ladders. The…

By: Bob Kalkreuter The girl’s tight red dress bounced around like a bag of fighting cats. A car slowed and honked. “Well lookie there,” said Ernie, leaning against one of the palm trees that fronted the empty parking lot directly across…

By: Vijay Johnson-Tanco “Listen, ye children, to the tale I have to tell. The morals I can teach you will save all of us from our own destruction. All I ask is not even a moment of your time, a…

By: Vijay Johnson-Tanco From a very young age people all begin to learn, so they can work, love, and appreciate. -Please don’t! I didn’t mean to do this, I shouldn’t die! God no!- It is said that humans need to…

By: Ajay Patri She tells me to start using contact lenses. I want to protest at this suggestion, enraged that she is so insensitive to the intimate connection I share with glasses. But because we are surrounded by people, I…