Three Hybrid Prose
Sêance So-and-so with your arms at your side – tiny bits of mercury in your mouth. true crime is never as disturbing as the podcast claims. so, someone doesn’t get out alive; big deal. I have an app on my iPhone that alerts me when there’s gunfire – West 4th and whatever – my stomach […]
from “And Yet”
When Jeff Alessandrelli handed me a copy of And Yet, which was reissued by Future Tense Books in April 2024, he noted the book was a work of speculative fiction. I recently described it to someone as Boy Bluets. When Nik Slackman, a digital editor at Fence, read an excerpt, he said: “I love this. […]
from the tale in gray [second light after death]
where to let time fly. is the night still weighing on the day. school closed. your teachers jumped on and off stage like monkeys on a hot tin roof. hands banded behind their backs, they were kneeling down before a crowd that circled the school auditorium. a photo of […]
Fence Editorial Guidelines and Code of Conduct
Code of Conduct for Fence Editors Following is a guide as agreed to by the Editorial Directors and Board of Fence Magazine and Fence Books, for editorial policies as of 2024. ♦ Fence editors will treat each submission with utmost respect and protect the confidentiality and identity of submitters. ♦ Submissions received and in-progress should […]
When We Were Young
Salim, Obaid, Prakash, Usman, and I: five tough boys. We rolled our shirt sleeves up to the shoulders, hurled stones at pigeons, bulbuls, air-conditioner compressors. We were invincible, unpredictable. We saved our greatest mischief for the grocer. It went down this way: we would disperse into the grocery, open the ice cream fridge, then close […]
From “The Violet Hours”
From the point of view of love, look at this: a bank of purple irises, petals hanging like narrow tongues, the chipped tooth of a lover after tripping in the garden, the blood that rushes between the teeth like a tidal wave. See the red spreading. See it bloom at the buccal corners, slicking the […]
Five Essays on Mold While We Wait to Be Cleaned
How Mold Wants a Home as Badly as I Do, But Finding a Home Is the Same as Losing Your Name for It I feel sadness for the mold, a decayed reasoning, swimming pool drained and left with only the scum, but it is a living scum, scum that emanates an urge, the urge to […]
from the tale in gray [second light after death]
where to let time fly. is the night still weighing on the day. school closed. your teachers jumped on and off stage like monkeys on a hot tin roof. hands banded behind their backs, they were kneeling down before a crowd that circled the school auditorium. a photo of the sick old great […]
You Came Back / 回来了
i. (Read by the author) From the outside looking in, the way I look is the most obvious thing about being foreign; that I am most obviously foreign to others here in China. Some people will stare at me when I walk down the street, ride the bus, or walk around the grocery. Some will […]