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American Short Fiction, Volume 28, Issue 82
Featuring new stories by Lydi Conklin, Annie Liontas, Kyle McCarthy, Carrie R. Moore, KJ Nakazawa-Kern, and Colleen Rosenfeld.
Issue 82
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Lydi Conklin, “Sorry about the Wolf”
I studied your pictures for hours. Hours over weeks, because it took that long to arrange a date. Not because of you, because of me—in the aftermath of my breakup, I spent long days on worthless magazine pitches: tired ones about California cuisine, unhinged ones about the erotics of wildfire. Work was the only way to forget Elena. But I was forcing myself to date, at least once, at least to try. I’d clear the air, open myself to possibility.
—
Annie Liontas, “So Long”
I had not been inside since they added automatic doors and turned the Town Food into a Food Town, preferring to drive fifteen minutes to the Shop Best where I was guaranteed to run into no one and where every aisle smelled like the meat counter. For whatever reason, the parking lot of Shop Best was strewn with straw—people tracked it onto the linoleum, strands pasting around the wheels of the shopping carts—and I’d often find it in bed when I woke up in the mornings, flattened between the sheets. This was a period in my life when, having moved home to take care of my parents, who were aging faster than could be believed, I went to the grocery store two, three times a day, always forgetting the most important items on the list. Sundays gave into Mondays, and when Friday came, I’d be desperate for the week to start all over again. I guess I’m saying that it was I who walked up to Gina in the produce aisle, abandoning my cart to the annoyance of an employee-child. I had lost my baby fat, was wearing the right shoes, and wanted her to see that I’d grown into the beautiful person she had always insisted I could be.
—
Kyle McCarthy, “The First Wife of Bluebeard”
How it worked: we were bait. We wore platform heels. We had our hair down. We were high from performing, and some of us wanted wine and some of us coke and some a bucket of ice water for our calves. What we didn’t want was dinner on steaming platters beneath heat lamps behind the curtain marked Staff, though we did want éclairs, profiteroles, opera cake, anything from the dessert trays put out for the patrons with coffee and brandy. Sugar we loved. Ballerinas are sugar fiends.
—
Carrie R. Moore, “When We Go, We Go Downstream”
In the restaurant’s fading light, he tells the story to his woman. Warily, the way his father told it to him:
There once lived a man named Elijah. A man who, among many other things—blacksmith, singer, lover of russet pears—had been born a slave. In those days, Texas had yet again changed its mind about what it was. It had belonged to Mexico, then became its own fearsome land, then joined Polk’s America, then splintered off with the rest of the rebellious South. Texas dreamed of cotton and the hands to pick it. Elijah dreamed of Evaline, whom his master forbade him to call wife.
—
KJ Nakazawa-Kern, “Archer’s Paradox”
My boy Dr. Darren Wu is going through a divorce and we don’t know if he’s alright. He did buy a bow and arrow and a bullseye, but since his yard is short, he extends the range of his target practice by sliding open the back door and standing in the living room and shooting arrows through multiple rooms of the house at the target. Darren showed us a video of this, me and our other friend, the camera tight on him in his teal hoodie with a wrist protector fastened over the left sleeve, his phone probably on a countertop leaned against a cup or something, as he nocks another arrow and raises the bow, but we were laughing so hard over our burritos he shut it off early.
—
Colleen Rosenfeld, “The Skilled Anatomist”
She told me about the procedure the same way she was always telling me about her newest exercise regime or dietary restriction or partially prepared meal delivery service. With the zeal of a convert. Part of the pitch was her desire for a companion. She wanted me to join her. I would help her stay committed and the treatment would be more fun together, but honestly, she wanted this for me, too.
“The procedure is about clearing out space,” she explained, “instead of repressing. An exchange, part for place.”
—
ASF Issue 82 Cover Art by Ruhee Maknojia.
Issue 82
--
Lydi Conklin, “Sorry about the Wolf”
I studied your pictures for hours. Hours over weeks, because it took that long to arrange a date. Not because of you, because of me—in the aftermath of my breakup, I spent long days on worthless magazine pitches: tired ones about California cuisine, unhinged ones about the erotics of wildfire. Work was the only way to forget Elena. But I was forcing myself to date, at least once, at least to try. I’d clear the air, open myself to possibility.
—
Annie Liontas, “So Long”
I had not been inside since they added automatic doors and turned the Town Food into a Food Town, preferring to drive fifteen minutes to the Shop Best where I was guaranteed to run into no one and where every aisle smelled like the meat counter. For whatever reason, the parking lot of Shop Best was strewn with straw—people tracked it onto the linoleum, strands pasting around the wheels of the shopping carts—and I’d often find it in bed when I woke up in the mornings, flattened between the sheets. This was a period in my life when, having moved home to take care of my parents, who were aging faster than could be believed, I went to the grocery store two, three times a day, always forgetting the most important items on the list. Sundays gave into Mondays, and when Friday came, I’d be desperate for the week to start all over again. I guess I’m saying that it was I who walked up to Gina in the produce aisle, abandoning my cart to the annoyance of an employee-child. I had lost my baby fat, was wearing the right shoes, and wanted her to see that I’d grown into the beautiful person she had always insisted I could be.
—
Kyle McCarthy, “The First Wife of Bluebeard”
How it worked: we were bait. We wore platform heels. We had our hair down. We were high from performing, and some of us wanted wine and some of us coke and some a bucket of ice water for our calves. What we didn’t want was dinner on steaming platters beneath heat lamps behind the curtain marked Staff, though we did want éclairs, profiteroles, opera cake, anything from the dessert trays put out for the patrons with coffee and brandy. Sugar we loved. Ballerinas are sugar fiends.
—
Carrie R. Moore, “When We Go, We Go Downstream”
In the restaurant’s fading light, he tells the story to his woman. Warily, the way his father told it to him:
There once lived a man named Elijah. A man who, among many other things—blacksmith, singer, lover of russet pears—had been born a slave. In those days, Texas had yet again changed its mind about what it was. It had belonged to Mexico, then became its own fearsome land, then joined Polk’s America, then splintered off with the rest of the rebellious South. Texas dreamed of cotton and the hands to pick it. Elijah dreamed of Evaline, whom his master forbade him to call wife.
—
KJ Nakazawa-Kern, “Archer’s Paradox”
My boy Dr. Darren Wu is going through a divorce and we don’t know if he’s alright. He did buy a bow and arrow and a bullseye, but since his yard is short, he extends the range of his target practice by sliding open the back door and standing in the living room and shooting arrows through multiple rooms of the house at the target. Darren showed us a video of this, me and our other friend, the camera tight on him in his teal hoodie with a wrist protector fastened over the left sleeve, his phone probably on a countertop leaned against a cup or something, as he nocks another arrow and raises the bow, but we were laughing so hard over our burritos he shut it off early.
—
Colleen Rosenfeld, “The Skilled Anatomist”
She told me about the procedure the same way she was always telling me about her newest exercise regime or dietary restriction or partially prepared meal delivery service. With the zeal of a convert. Part of the pitch was her desire for a companion. She wanted me to join her. I would help her stay committed and the treatment would be more fun together, but honestly, she wanted this for me, too.
“The procedure is about clearing out space,” she explained, “instead of repressing. An exchange, part for place.”
—
ASF Issue 82 Cover Art by Ruhee Maknojia.
121 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2025
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