Month: March 2019

A Soft Splendor by A.M. Kennedy

Melt the gold between your palms and smear it on everything you love: your hips, your lips, the soles of your feet. This month I am sick of sand and sun and callouses; in my dreams I am new skin, tender and thin. The fluttering of my heartbeat rises in every place my angles meet, Read More

Small Matters by Rebecca Wesloh

Leah and Cecelia, two teenage girls, sit buried in two chairs next to each other. They spend the entire time on their phones, not looking up. Brief pauses are taken between each dialogue break in which the girls continue scrolling through their phones. Leah: Did you see Beth got her hair cut? Cecelia: No. Let Read More

[I could paint some surreal image] by Alison Hazle

I could paint some surreal imageof this room—how the sun latchesto my back on the walk inside, how I screw itinto the lamp and how it sproutsthe seeds I scattered across the floor. I could say it stays thereand keeps this room warm. I could say it lives there       until the ceiling tiles partto reveal Read More

What Am I If I Am Not by Micaela Walley

What am I if I am not a girl? The pulpy body of a dead sea mollusk, dissolving?             Am I crunchy?                           The shell it left behind,                       Read More

[After my husband died, I did not] by Tim Neil

After my husband died, I did noteat anything for two days. Hunger felt familiar after years of marriage to an echo. On the third day, I just wanted to make a simple meal. I had no pasta, no fine bread,just American cheese, a garlic clove, and one fucking egg. He had left itfor me, along Read More

Zion in El Salvador by Emely Rodriguez

Abuelita wraps me up in tamalitos, so warm,But she cools me down with Fresa Tropical, ahCanciones de mariachi cry in the background, and weDance like we’re wearing clothes made of cucarachas Executing imprecise movements like forced twitchesFixating, fixating, fixating, on las guitarras Gently strummed, unlike the singers’ vocal chords Harsh, hoarse, heartfelt vibrations that tingle Read More

An Interview with Timothy Taranto

Interview conducted by Macy Meyer, nonfiction editor Timothy Taranto is the author of Ars Botanica, a gorgeous memoir exploring—in the form of letters to his unborn child—the intimate details of self-image, love, and loss through the realities of Alopecia, an ending relationship, and an abortion. Writer Karen Russell called it “a gorgeous hybrid” and “one Read More

ANNOUNCEMENT: High School Contest Winners

Congratulations Samantha Proctor and Lily Davidson, winners of Grub Street‘s writing contest for high school students. Timothy Taranto, author of Ars Botanica (one of our staff’s all-time favorite memoirs), judged. Sneak Peek of “The Boy Who Drew Halos” by Samantha Proctor When I met her, it was dawn. Her chickens had come out, and the Read More

“Aria” by Sam Regal

Sometimes I’m shopping online, which is something I love to do, shop online, as every store is a new puzzle to solve, like, which clothes would I buy if I shopped here, and sometimes I end up buying the clothes, so I guess you could say it’s very meta and works on a few levels, Read More