Another baby’s chubby elbow is nearly-but-not-quite cropped out of the edge of the photo. They have expanded their family. I know what it is like to feel that echo, a ghost limb just outside of my peripheral vision.
in Ghost Parachute
I fixed my own drink and made it weak because I was afraid of making a fool of myself. I sat as far away from you as possible but our every eye contact formed a hypotenuse of longing.
in Gone Lawn
Now your wife has put the house up for sale. I guess the mortgage was too much to handle on her own. I scroll through the real estate listing like playing the world’s worst first-person shooter game.
in X-R-A-Y
I’ve thought of those days, each time I’ve wrapped the bowl in newspaper to move: to a better apartment, to a new city for a job, to move in with the man I would eventually marry.
in No Contact
“Build Your Own Disaster” in Punk Noir, August 2023
“Non-Paternity Event” in Invisible City, March 2023
“Everything Unfolds As It Was Meant To” Anomaly, April 2022
“Crown Shyness.” Anthology: And If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative, Alternating Current Press, January 2022.
“It Is What It Was” matchbook, May 2021
“I was always a mad comet, but you have fixed me” in Best Short Stories of Philadelphia
Everywhere & Nowhere at Once. Chapbook: Ghost City Press, August 2021.
“It’s Called Calculating for a Reason” The Jarnal, Mason Jar Press, October 2021.
“Scrawled on the back of a placemat at Denny’s outside Pittston, PA.” LEON Literary Review, December 2021.
“Scribbled in the Back of a Composition Notebook” in MoonPark Review
“Every Night, We Make Ourselves Over Again” in Schuylkill Valley Lit
“Got What I Asked For” in The Bulletin, Alan Squire Publishing
“Every Year Is Going to Be the One” for Hobart
“Spacewalk Procedure and Preparation” in CutBank
Micro for Mythic Picnic “Persephone” in Mythic Picnic v6
“On the Reflected Counter” at 50 Word Stories
“Within the Fold” in 101 Words
“Delivery” in Apiary Magazine Essential Issue
“Even Pluto’s Orbit Crosses Within.” Entropy, October 2019
“The Weight of Expectancy.” Every Day Fiction, April 2019
“What Philly Schools Need Now” in Billy Penn
“It’s School Choice Week in Pa. Don’t buy what its advocates are selling” with Penn Capital Star
“Don’t steal our teachers during a pandemic” in Billy Penn
“Philly school board silences teachers, parents, and students” in the Philadelphia Inquirer
“Where Are the White Kindergartners?” The Typescript, May 2019.
“Let’s make Philly schools the better choice.” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 7, 2017.
On the Ice, All the Daughters Are Free in Autofocus
With Chloe N. Clark “Collective Gravities” for Anomaly
“As Below, So Above.” Lumen, September 2015.
“On Discovering a Man I was Secretly in Love with Wrote a Poem Portraying Me in an Unflattering Light.” Lilith, Summer 2013. Winner, Lilith Short Fiction Prize.
“Luck.” Loch Raven Review, Spring 2009.
“Ghost Bite.” Quarterly West, Winter 2006. Winner, Quarterly West Novella Prize.
Trust me, I won’t email you too often.
© Stephanie King, 2021
is proudly powered by WordPress