Archives

TWO BOYS DOWNTOWN AT PLAY by J. Edward Kruft

July 19, 2020

They were to meet at the Ben Bridge clock, as usual. Aaron arrived first, in his Spandau Ballet t-shirt and Levi’s ripped at both knees, last year’s ski-jacket, unzipped as it was a warm day. He stood smoking his Camel as a murder of boys came by. “Fag,” one of them called and they all laughed and looked over their shoulders and pointed and laughed again, and Aaron, he blew smoke from his nose. He watched Matt approach from 4th Avenue. Matt, with his shoulder-length hair, in his Smiths t-shirt and paint-splattered cords and green Spiewak parka that was torn

HOME AT LAST by Greg Oldfield

July 19, 2020

The first Monday with our rescue Allosaurus Mix, I stopped home for lunch and found the ottoman in pieces. Splintered wood, strips of chewed leather, and stuffing littered the family room with a trail of buttons behind the couch. “Max has to stay in the crate,” I said to Steph on the phone while Max was playing tug of war with my suit pants. “But Max is only a baby,” she said. “Babies need rules, too.” “They also need nurturing and a room with a view. Max can’t even see out the window.” That night, after I lugged to the

LIPSTICK BOTTOMS (CHICAGO, IL – JULY 2008) by Taylor Byas

July 18, 2020

It’s past 2 am on the southside of Chicago when my aunt Danielle, my father’s older sister, brings me and her daughter Ginai along for a late-night alcohol run. With each step, every part of my aunt ripples. Her hair is half-pressed half-shrinking from the dry summer heat. On her right thigh, clear packing tape covers a hole where she says a spider bite ate away at the flesh. I am too young to know that “spider bite” is a euphemism for an infected track mark. “Damn girl, you wore those shorts just for me didn’t you?” a white man

LUMPS by Sean Littlefield Chumley

July 18, 2020

Unlike most people who live near restaurants, I never visit the fast-food place next to my house. Chunkee’s looks like any other corporate restaurant. The shellacked exterior, the vibrant sign a mile high announcing its presence like a lighthouse, the drive-thru menu with its voice-box speaker. I’ve never seen a Chunkee’s anywhere else, and I’ve never seen a commercial for one, and I don’t know what kind of food they serve other than fast. The sign doesn’t give much away. I watch it change every day, but the bottom always says NO BURGERS HERE!!!!!! From the window next to my

SEISMOLOGY by James Sullivan

July 17, 2020

In 2011 I was in a 3-tatami room. * That means a tall man can lie down only in one direction. * How do we measure a room? A living space? I don’t know the square footage of my Minnesota apartment. Only that it’s the smallest in this building, maybe the smallest anywhere in town. But when my neighbor moved out and my landlord offered me his place (“It’s a lot more spacious, maybe $10 more a month.”), I didn’t even look before deciding against it. * You never know when you’ll need that money. For supplies. For an extra

WITHOUT YOU, I’M EVERYTHING by Felicity Fenton

July 17, 2020

They went away, left her for others. They called less. They texted less. Soon they were running into each other in the parking lot of the dump, rushing to get back to things. “You look great.” They didn’t mean it. “You seem great.” They didn’t mean it. “So great to see you.” They weren’t sure. They boasted about busyness. Their kids, their houses, their husbands. She was busy felting socks for refugees. They were busy driving sports utility vehicles. She was busy searching for working pay phones so she could call her grandmother and tell her she had been places.

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