As the new millennium drew near, Erin’s family began preparing for the apocalypse. Jesus was going to return at the stroke of midnight, appearing in the New York City skyline as the ball dropped on TV and the moon turned to blood.
Nominated by Black Lawrence Press editors for a Pushcart Prize.
These are the wild days. We girls grow our hair long and insouciant like horsetails. We don’t think about boys. We don’t dress for them or take pictures for them or worry about what they’re thinking. Someday we’re supposed to submit to them, but not now. For now, they’re just boys. They’re not God. For now, we run with them.
Mom is taking me to a new church to be prayed over. Ordinarily, we’re not supposed to go to non-fundamentalist churches. . . .
Selected by Longform as a Fiction Pick of the Week.
I swallowed the whale before it could swallow me. It’s sitting in my belly now, asleep with one eye open and watchful. . . .
Nominated by Jellyfish Review editors for the Best Microfiction anthology.
Because we were Christian girls from fundamentalist churches, we wore our dads’ old, floppy t-shirts to the pool at our co-ed Christian camp.
Included in Bartleby Snopes, Issue 11 as a staff selection.
Laurie never used anything she learned in home ec until she dumped Neil. Now she’s sewed a voodoo doll—back stitch, overcast stitch, running stitch. Two days ago she cut up Neil’s gray Old Navy hoodie that he gave her after the homecoming dance . . .
Gargoyle 62.
Nominated by Gargoyle editors for a Pushcart Prize.
Reprinted Eunoia Review ⟶
A rusted mess of barbed wire nearly stripped Debbie of her torso in her first and only car accident.
Selected by BookPeople as a recommended weekend read.
“Virgie Townsend’s Flash Friday on the Tin House blog shows the power of a very few well-chosen words.” — Rob Spillman, Tin House editor.
Michael heard once that the stars used to be so close and bright that his ancestors could see the shape of a spoon hanging in the sky. On nights like this one, when he’s walking home from work with his nose buried in his coat, he looks up and tries to find that mythological constellation. He never does—his eyes are too weak and the stars are too distant.
Selected by SmokeLong Quarterly editors for inclusion in SmokeLong Quarterly: The Best of the First Ten Years.
Bethany’s little sister asks for an omelet. From beneath her pile of down and crocheted blankets, Gloria requests eggs with cheese, chorizo, and potatoes. She lifts her bloated hands, holds them seven inches apart, and says, “Make it this big.”
Nominated by WhiskeyPaper editors for Best Small Fictions of 2015.
Marcella’s foot bounces forth and back, forth and back, as she unlearns middle school math. With her right hand, she unscrawls her name– the curling ‘c’ and looping ‘ls’– from the desk, and then sweeps her red hair out from behind her ear.
Selected by Pif editors for inclusion in Best of Pif, Volume One.