Now, What Do You Want?
The sophisticated lady sees the small helpless child contained in a steel cylinder. The child’s anxious upturned face is …
Short Story
Before the game I asked my Girl to stop cheering for Doofus Danny, the roided out linebacker all the …
Short Story
She just stopped. She does this. “This is stupid.
Short Story
Man hurtles himself headfirst at his 15th-floor window, all the unwavering self-hate Man can muster.Window doesn’t shatter, doesn’t shudder, doesn’t waver.Window is no Hollywood pussy break-away glass window.Man is no …
Flash Fiction

Recent Titles

Birthweek of a Hikikomori

Get the latest from Dumbo Press delivered to your inbox:

Web Features

Surprise Endings
It was all a dream.I’m actually a cat.You have a split personality that’s way cooler and more assertive than you and gets all the ladies.The doctor was the injured boy’s …
Flash Fiction
For you Sam, Favorite books
For you Sam Sam calls it this human experiment I ripped off the phrase It features in the opening story of my book Which I sent to Sam Who read …
Poetry
That Time Robin Williams Died and I Saw My Mother On A Night Out In Ibiza
I don’t expect to run into my mother on the Ibiza strip surrounded by drunks and neon lights and …
Flash Fiction
an act of kindness
i hunger for the moment of entry for expansion yielding all pretense all carefully constructed indifference to a muted question of permission may? i?
Poetry
Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?: An excerpt from the novel Petra
Janice learned early in her journalism career–when she still had a career, or access to that grand ladder of …
Short Story
subjugation, not safe
subjugation wait, i can explain -- i used to be feral, chewing raw meat with sugary teeth, sucking on a carcass during sleepless nights, trying to fend off boars and …
Poetry
Caroline
Leonard and I had laughed hard first, then with trepidation, when Caroline, at five years old and in …
Short Story
The Hibernating Homunculus
My mind is blurry when I write. What is writing, where does it go, I do not know.
Essay
Sunny, Confused, Ice Cream
Sunny And now the sun appears – an arrogant schoolboy staring through my window – What am I doing? Just looking.
Poetry
Last Night
Now, with your temporary elopement drawing to an end, every minute spent together was, for both of you, “worth …
Short Story
Nostalgia, Overland
Nostalgia Tidal rapids. The current was too strong.
Poetry
Ye Brazen Beasts
1793The hickories and black gums done been naked a piece, and Christmas come and went two months past. …
Short Story
The Father Who Tried his Hardest
There once was a father who tried his hardest to achieve his goal of teaching his son to …
Flash Fiction
Frank and Mattie
Just below the fine white linen tablecloth, on his lap where only she could see it, he held …
Short Story
Does the revolution start in our rooms?
When I was 14, I was first made aware of what happened to the women who were protesting …
Essay
Walking the Gulf Stream
I like to walk fast and imagine minutes falling away on the other side of whatever journey is unfolding. …
Flash Fiction
Childhood
I lived in a town where starving girls weaved Paper chains from heartstrings and gum wrappers, Staving off reality with cheap spirits coaxed from older lovers I lived …
Poetry
The Summer I Stopped Eating
Peeling oranges with our eyes closed, on a rooftop lidded with stars Moon scrapes away a crescent of the sky and we cut away pounds of Our flesh …
Poetry
Party
Ketamine kisses douse a blazing girl with the sick tang of gasoline, heartthrob, dementia She droops, star splayed and eager in her drowsiness, sped by the rhyme …
Poetry
Other; In Her Tavern; Rubble
Other Faces shift in my dreams from us to them and back. They are with me, free in that place: my people, cast out as Other from this …
Poetry
Smarties
Candy wrappers slathered onto wooden tables and chip bags’ potent smells wafted through the air and around the …
Flash Fiction
Blind Man In The Snow
Blind Man in the Snow I was troubled about something, I can't remember what. It might have …
Flash Fiction
It Will Come Back, Distant Music, Transient Stroke, Basic Math
It Will Come Back we say (fingers crossed, knock on wood, salt over shoulder) because it always has, because we don’t know what we’ll do if it doesn’t. Spring, …
Poetry
Connection
On the rare occasion when I dine with friends, I find that not only I, but also Lan, …
Flash Fiction
Meal Time
Meal Time Each morning, I boil the ocean to make my tea. I season my eggs with just sea and I eat it with a side of …
Poetry