Between Sessions — Ghost Parachute

I’m coming down the pike. It’s a different kind of vibe. Now I’m a 3-D monosyllabic image of myself.  I’m almost holographic. I mean, do animals really believe in God? Anyway, my guess is it’s probabl...

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Star Shine — Ghost Parachute

It wasn’t a bad baby, she just liked to make it cry. They called the baby Star Shine because that was its name and Lesly thought that was a joke—her older brother not known for his humor but for his s...

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Stronger Than a Tornado — Ghost Parachute

“I bet you’re a scaredy cat and wouldn’t dare go inside the house,” Rumy says, her noodle arms crossed. Kai whizzes on his new bike around us. Never set foot in the corner lot house, my Maman said eve...

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Indignation — Ghost Parachute

When he showed up at my front door, it was hard to take him seriously. He was an older man, on the far side of sixty. He told me he had a claim on my house, despite possessing no paperwork, no proof. ...

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What Wei Boyang Dreamed of When He Invented Gunpowder — Ghost Parachute

I first fell in love with fire when I watched the body of my father burn in the pyre, his flesh transmuting into a fine powder that danced circles in the breeze like a soul set free, so I swallowed my...

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The Middle Distance — Ghost Parachute

He spoke an ancient language out of Siberia. Full of wide low skies and rolling grasslands, shawled men with staffs, and ponies grazing over distances. This is one of those stories where people magica...

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Moon, Mount, Mountain — Ghost Parachute

Nearing the border, Celal peeks out of the hole. He’s sitting fetus-like in the back of the truck. A swirl of cool air seeps in and dissipates the steam creeping on his glasses like ivy. He can hear a...

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Larry Barely — Ghost Parachute

He wasn’t really our Dad, I called him Larry because his van smelled like Limberger cheese. And he wore brown slacks to match his wheels, the fabric sagged, and his velour shirts always reeked of reef...

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Ship in a Bottle — Ghost Parachute

Dahlia peers out to the horizon where a tiny sailboat hovers. Her throat tightens when she imagines it speeding away and disappearing from sight, wishes she could pluck it from the sea, cradle it in h...

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How Do I Clear a Search History — Ghost Parachute

How do I assess if someone is lying What are somatic “cues” Most unobtrusive GPS tracking devices How do I install a GPS tracking device Can a phone detect a hidden tracker How much does average divor...

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Meteor — Ghost Parachute

While I took down the strings of green and red lights I’d looped around our young maple tree before Christmas, my wife Christine followed the boy who lived next door up and down the sidewalk as he rod...

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While We’re Blue Crabs — Ghost Parachute

your carapace is an inky blue, mine an olive green.  We float the Gulf of Mexico for years, hunt tiny mussels, detritus, and oysters until one day a Great Blue Heron lifts you away. We’re carnival wor...

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Jumpers — Ghost Parachute

I’ve tried for years to forget them, tried not to imagine how it was to step away from those fingers of fire into the cool air of a September morning. I used to dream I was one of them, on a window le...

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The Guys in the Parked Cars — Ghost Parachute

One guy from summer school only wanted head. Told me I was pretty but he wasn’t really into me. Had plans to date this other girl. Smaller. Petite. Not me. In that moment, I had to choose between doin...

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Kate Webster and the Gorgon’s Head — Ghost Parachute

Gran’s stories were full of local creatures, the banshee, the kelpie, the pooka. But my brothers said I was the real creature. They had me convinced I was a changeling. Told me the good people had tak...

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August 2026 Issue — Ghost Parachute

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Zihuatanejo — Ghost Parachute

when memory leaves my body i will be free to live on a planet where everything is white: the sun, the sky, the ocean. i will lie to rest in a field with moist green grass, soft brown soil, and gentle,...

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The Day of the Doomed Appliances — Ghost Parachute

All the appliances stopped at once that Thursday afternoon. It was a mass rebellion. Peggy was unprepared, despite a similar experience with her underwear. Her Hanes cotton briefs in Easter-egg pastel...

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Moulding Her Life — Ghost Parachute

It’ll get easier, Mother would say. Just keep your head down. Frances obeyed even when handed over to the first suitor who asked for her hand, barely thirteen, to a widower nearly as old as Father. Fr...

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Janie at the Bar — Ghost Parachute

Janie saunters into the bar that night, minidress, wild hair, and we all stare, because absolutely none of us expected her to show her face around here ever again, not after what she did to Brad. We f...

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My Name Is Colleen Honche — Ghost Parachute

I wore the white dress I sewed myself—I hemmed it neat and everything—on the day the marionberry sky cracked open like a cadaver’s chest. At recess. In the middle of me twirling and turning. Shimmying...

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Baby’s First Accidental Shooting — Ghost Parachute

When our toddler shot the mailman, that was my bad. I’d forgotten to put my Glock in the gun safe, due to having been drinking, and I left it out on the coffee table despite the fact that I know Baby ...

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In Loving Memory — Ghost Parachute

Grandma had always been the family historian. She held onto all our memories. If somebody couldn’t remember a name, an occasion, an anecdote, she’d have the answer. She even held a web of histories th...

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Skunk Ape’s Girlfriend Said No — Ghost Parachute

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.″ —Carl Sagan He thought it to be a romantic gesture—emerging from the Florida Everglades to plod to Bucky Banks’ Swamp Shop to buy the ring, a sma...

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Fair Night Redux — Ghost Parachute

Mothers at the fair feel their muscles tense, feel steel form in their bellies, pull their children close, fight or flight, when the Scrap BoyMen walk by. The mothers’ eyes follow the erratic steps of...

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Phrynosoma Platyrhinos — Ghost Parachute

January 11, 1951 You. You reside in the high desert sixty-five miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada, far from the casinos and show girls. You are legend. Indigenous peoples adorn rocks with your image. Fo...

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Dead butterflies don't know what closure is because they're dead — Ghost Parachute

Her family was trying out the new Italian restaurant in town, and while her dad signed the check, the waiter slipped her a note with his number on it. She had been watching him. Like she watched the h...

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Lovegrove — Ghost Parachute

We all smelled like sulfur that summer. Brunswick was a pulp mill town on the coast of Georgia, beachless but shouldered by the murk of blackwater swamps that teemed with alligators and the occasional...

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Crooked Wood — Ghost Parachute

Memories stack like a cord of crooked wood, shifty and full of spiders. There was shouting and slamming of doors, which your older brother Jay turned into games of hide and seek, tucking you into smal...

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