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Join NOW!The next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Amaris Ketcham. Here’s an excerpt: We rode in silence, drinking and looking past our reflections out the windows. It occurred to me that she never asked where I was headed, but I was feeling drunk and warm and didn’t care. It was nice going somewhere without walking, as […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Josiane Curtis. Here’s an excerpt: I imagined that sometime down the road, a teenager might appear at my door wanting to know why she smiled crooked or threw her head back when she laughed. I would invite her in. That I came to terms with the full weight […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Jeff Albers. Here’s an excerpt: These parties normally had a certain rhythm that suited Frank’s style, so relaxed and casual as to lead him to coin his own time signature, Loesserando, which, he explained, should fall somewhere between the slow walking pace of andante moderato and the reduced […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Rebecca Gummere. Here’s an excerpt: Swing your arms, stretch a little. Keep walking and untie the sweater. Think about how much you hate it, how the shade makes you look like you are recovering from flu. Green was never your color. It amazes you all over again that […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Ursula Villarreal-Moura. Here’s an excerpt: Within a month of knowing her, Irina had turned me on to shoplifting. I was hooked on the thrill of procuring ordinary and exquisite items. From grocery stores, we lifted packages of string cheese, sprinkled donuts, lipsticks, index cards, disposable cameras, and collars […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Sonja Vitow. Here’s an excerpt: It used to bother me and Connor a little that Rachel kept the photos from the wallets we stole. At the end of the day I don’t particularly want to think about the people whose money we took. By now though, we all have […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Jill Hanley. Here’s an excerpt: Lola stepped into the kitchen to find her mother standing at the sink, showing no signs of tears. She could still remember how hard, loud, and ugly her mother’s tears had been at Lola’s aunt’s funeral; when Asher had put the Saint Anthony medal […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Johnny Alfi. Here’s an excerpt: She once gave me her number outside Abbot’s Habit Coffeehouse. She once proposed that she and Nora get matching tattoos of peaches on their ass cheeks. Instead, she got a little diamond there, alone. She once ate Lunchables for lunch for a week […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features flash fiction from Valerie Geary. Here’s an excerpt: We left our mark in a square of wet cement outside your garage. Your parents were putting in a new step after the old one cracked during last winter’s big freeze. They were worried someone was going to trip and fall and […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Ian Bassingthwaighte. Here’s an excerpt: I spend all night thinking about bopping Karen ASAP like that would prove she’s right for me. Then immediately before sunup I sneak out of my cabin with the secret mission of finding hers. I want to ask if she’s also homesick. I hope […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from N. Michelle AuBuchon. Here’s an excerpt: The more you take away, the more the world opens up. This is a poetic way of saying that Lakshmi was living vicariously through the amputation and relocation of her body parts. To an outsider she looked like a stump in a […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features flash fiction from Christopher Kennedy. Here’s an excerpt: What are the odds that a fantastic one could ever lose to an ordinary asshole? Good, you think. The fantastic ones are always losing, mistaken for ordinary assholes, and the ordinary assholes are preening about disguised as the fantastic ones. This is the […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Caitlin McGuire. Here’s an excerpt: For a while after he came back, Annie’s mom wouldn’t let him out of the house. When she finally gave him permission to go outside, he was only allowed in the backyard, and only after dark. But that was okay because if there […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Helen Ellis. Here’s an excerpt: Relocation. That is a big word! It means change. Like when you change from your two-piece into your Little Orphan Annie outfit for talent. You contacted me because you want to change your life. You want to change mommies. You don’t want to […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Paula Whyman. Here’s an excerpt: I woke up one morning having transformed into a cockroach. One day I was my normal, within-bounds horny self, the horny self I’d lived with for decades, the one that fantasized over the good parts in A Sport and a Pastime and watched Paul […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Elizabeth Kadetsky. Here’s an excerpt: It was after siesta when Milo finally had the chance to converse in private with the small man, this castaway seeking refuge. The Italian spoke in a hushed voice. Il Negro was like himself an exile. They were brothers in this way, Milo told […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Cynthia Romanowski. Here’s an excerpt: It’s November which means you’ve been stable on medication for exactly five years, sixty months, though it’s not something that people really celebrate. It’s not like remission from cancer or sobriety. Nobody celebrates not being put in a mental hospital. People might celebrate getting out […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Julie Babcock. Here’s an excerpt: For four months, Elle came to my apartment with a host of delightful ideas. Elle the cat burglar in Rome. Elle the Parisian schoolteacher. Elle the Colorado sheepherder. Elle the English barmaid. I was attentive and responsive. I followed her rules and began mastering […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Wynne Hungerford. Here’s an excerpt: After losing the foot, my daddy gave up on going places. He sat on the leather couch in his office at home. He drank Yoo-hoos and stopped throwing away the bottles. He peeled off the label, painted the glass with shades of pink […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Justin Hamm. Here’s an excerpt: I gave him a post card. He autographed it. I gave him one of his early records. He autographed it. I gave him a record by Justin Bieber. He autographed it. I gave him a two-dollar bill. He autographed it. I gave him […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Leah Griesmann. Here’s an excerpt: For nearly a month Deuce did not speak with My-li. He saw in her stooped walk at work how it pained her, heard it in the high pitched tone of her unreturned messages, felt it when he played piano. But just like an […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Katherine Zlabek! Here’s an excerpt: There is a rocking chair in the house. The wood is solid. The varnish is worn. The seat was once a thick, flat oak sheet. Now it is curved from the skirts wearing it out, and greased from the supper hands and the […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus brings fiction from Gordon Haber! Here’s an excerpt: He waited on a corner of Place Gordaine, a street of half-timbered houses. She was late and it was cold and his gut told him that this might not end well, or even begin at all if she did not show up. He […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Marcy Campbell! Here’s an excerpt: I got my master’s when I discovered that the university was actually going to pay me to read, which is how I saw it. I like reading, and I have opinions about the books I read. That’s halfway to a degree right […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Jessica Mooney! Here’s an excerpt: My wife would finish out her last weeks in bed, screaming the alphabet to Vanna White. I read to her about Ars Poetica, the way memories form, how to survive nuclear fallout—I told her the story of our life. Throughout our marriage we […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Lisa P. Sutton! Here’s an excerpt: When he touches her knee, just a forefinger drawn lightly over her jeans, she moves her coffee cup and saucer to cover the spot. It is both too much too quickly and also not enough. In her fantasies of this moment, she […]
...moreLauren Grodstein most recent book is The Explanation for Everything and her last novel A Friend of the Family was a New York Times bestseller. This week, she contributes fiction to the Weekly Rumpus! Enjoy an excerpt of the story below: For the first time in forty-eight hours, Katie looked crushed. Since Monday, so composed, so helpful – […]
...moreThe next Weekly Rumpus features fiction from Lucy Corin! Here’s an excerpt: But the apocalypse is not the wobbling away. The wobbling away is life persisting. The apocalypse is him spinning, with the drink clink-clinking, delicate potential to go faster and faster, to drill a hole into the earth with his body-or-and-alternately, to dissipate centrifugally […]
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