Matt Kendrick
Writer | Editor | Teacher
WELKIN PRIZE 2024 - SHORTLISTED
Digestion
by Amy Barnes
Even when I borrow my mother’s stomach, I’m still hungry. I carry it like a fleshy purse full of other things, chewed gum, crackly crackers, keys, unwrapped hard candies. I read there are taste buds in your stomach. She pulls the stomach out of her belly and hands it to me on a silver platter like it’s pâté or caviar. Her face is paler and her legs and arms become pipe cleaner thin as she sips only gruel-thin oatmeal through a straw so I can eat a little extra like a two-stomached cow that is never quite full.
Amy Barnes is the author of three short fiction collections: "Ambrotypes" (Word West Press), “Mother Figures” (ELJ Editions) and "Child Craft" (Belle Point Press). Her words have appeared in publications including The Citron Review, JMWW Journal, Janus Lit, Flash Frog, No Contact Mag, Leon Review, Complete Sentence, The Bureau Dispatch, Nurture Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit, SmokeLong Quarterly, and many others. She’s been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, long-listed for the Wigleaf top 50 in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and included in Best Small Fictions 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit Associate Editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor and reads for CRAFT, The MacGuffin, and Narratively.
