Archives

THE BEEP by Jason Schwartzman

July 16, 2020

I am his tutor and he is trying to tell me about an unknown variable. About X. But he has forgotten that it’s called X. “The mysterious thing,” he says, laughing. I love him for this. I will tell everyone I know about the mysterious thing. During one session we’re in his apartment and I hear a beep. Just one beep. The microwave, probably. “I’m really sorry,” he tells me, tensing up. Sorry for what? It feels like I’m missing something. “Totally fine!” On the walk home I wonder why he was so on edge. Then I forget about it,

THREE QUARTERS by Steve Campbell

July 15, 2020

My uncle lost his leg in a motorbike accident. It wasn’t his whole leg, just half of it. And it wasn’t lost either, the doctors cut it off, but that’s what everyone whispers: He’s lost his leg, and then they cock their heads to one side and sort of smile. As I’m buying grapes for the hospital visit with my step-mother, the lady at the check-out makes the same head movement. She comments on how much my step-mother and I look alike. When I open my mouth to explain, my step-mother prods me so the lady can’t see. “Oh, I’m

DOGWALKER by L Scully

July 15, 2020

I Once, when you were still a girl, you loved another person. At the time, they were a girl too and you relished in your mutual girlhood from the roof of the funeral home in which you lived. You stayed in the funeral director’s suite and put up strings of tiny lights and a record player your girlfriend restored from the 70s. You would lay in the park with this friend of yours, heads on each other’s chests, nights spent giggling and intertwined. When they were a girl and you were a girl they were magic. You would crawl out

TO THE RESIDENTS OF NINETEEN-SOMETHING WEST NELSON by MK Sturdevant

July 8, 2020

To the Residents of Nineteen-Something West Nelson, I had sex in your living room. At the time, it was a fetus of a room, a zygote of a house. Your living room had just been set on its paved frames and caissons like a mother hen about to lay some furnishings. You know those tall, narrow windows trending in the new builds around ’07? The streetlamp light was gushing in, there was no glass, just these wings of Tyvek flapping like a slack sail at midnight on the open sea. We had gone for sushi in Bucktown. We were both

OFF COME THE MASKS by Mitchell Waldman

July 7, 2020

I’m driving down 104, out in the thinning herd of metal vehicles in pursuit of essentials, my mask on the seat beside me, right next to the miniature bottle of hand sanitizer and the pack of Marlboros, when I see him standing on the corner of 104 and Lake with his thin frame, long white beard, and the sign thrust up in the air “Prepare to Meet Your God!” I don’t know what comes over me, I slam on the brakes, the car behind almost smashing right into me, bleating its horn. I get out of the vehicle, and walk

UPHOLSTERY by Corey Farrenkopf

July 6, 2020

Silva left the tacks on the floor. Rick said to. Sweep up after, it saves time. The upholstery shop smelled of pulled cotton, dry foam, and whatever scent the furniture carried from its original home. Sometimes it was garlic, sometimes mothballs and wine. The plaid wingback chair propped before Silva held an odd copper aroma. He pried rusted staples from the armrest with a pronged screwdriver, tapping its steel end with a rubber mallet. Sometimes the metal was so old it turned to dust beneath Silva’s blows. Just leave them. I’ll cut them out later, Rick would say from behind

SPREE by Meg Tuite

July 6, 2020

Mom has an entire fortress of pillows that she readjusts around her body. “Barricading my skin against bedsores. Stay in one place for too long and you’ll have to order another ass from Walgreens.” Amber prescription bottles layer her bedside table. She marks the empties with a black X, doesn’t throw them away until a refill has been secured. Rustling toes mow through bed sheets as Mom drags up another mini-vodka with her feet. The bottomless cascade of that clear liquid is her Niagara Falls. She is queen of the mini-island. Bottles are stashed away in pockets, beds, pillows, shoes,

DOG TRACING by Mike Andrelczyk

July 5, 2020

I just remembered a maintenance man I used to work with who said he liked to get drunk and trace his dog on big sheets of paper and his garden was lined with pieces of broken hotel sinks. I just remembered this. Out of nowhere. When things come into your mind from out of nowhere it’s like looking at the outline of a dog on a piece of paper. The dog is gone, but its shape is there. This is a memory. Imagine one of those shitty video dissolving effects now. …. …. …. OK. I was standing in the

AFTER SWITCHING ANTIDEPRESSANTS, THE NIGHT STRETCHES by Matthew Mastricova

July 2, 2020

After switching antidepressants, the night stretches over his body as he lies next to you in bed, thinking about dying again, even though he would never tell you that. He would never tell you that for months it has been creeping out his mouth—his death, his parents’ deaths, his students’ deaths, the death (or non-death) that comes in the after death. When he is lucky, he can find an anchor: a pair of your socks balled hidden under the table or a can of apricot La Croix chilled for days. Leftovers of a from-scratch meal you cooked that he packed

THE TODDLERS ARE PLAYING AIRPORT AGAIN by Tucker Leighty-Phillips

July 1, 2020

They’ve partitioned everything: the slide is the runway, the jungle gym is the terminal, covered in tiny travelers; anything with mulch is part of the operations area. Nobody flies. Nobody ever wants to be pilot. The toddlers love every aspect of the airport except for flight. Tickle always wants to be the rampie, loading freight onto planes with his sandbox bucket. Dasha is the lav agent, as she’s the best at keeping the plane’s bathrooms within regulation. Everyone wants to be Bill Boyer, Jr, CEO. They fight over his stock options until they shove one another and you have to