Archives

CHILDISH THINGS by Barrett Bowlin

December 20, 2018

Hours after I first hear her voice in line at the bank, I make peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for the both of us with tall glasses of cold milk, edible memories from decades ago, and then she and I move to the daybed, together, her voice as cozy and warm as a mother’s breasts. “Point to something pink,” she says, my fingers on her chest. Her voice is bright and clear, a sparkling peal of sound, a live version of the recording made for the Little Reader for Girls I remember having in second grade, the one that took

BOREDOMS by Grant Maierhofer

December 19, 2018

I’m a better tabloid than citizen. A friend of mine once wound up on the cover of their city’s something having passed out near the lawnmower he worked. He’d fixed up nearby within a building for soil and various landscaping tools and nodded off on a hillside holding his penis. I met him in treatment. He’d left one day for court and returned with pornography flat against his belly, tucked and sweated within jeans. He’d exhumed it and hatched a plot to scoop away the ceiling’s makeup and tunnel into the female rooms. I hid that night seated on the

STUNG by Sheree Shatsky

December 18, 2018

Mary found her honey bee the same way as her momma and her momma before. She paid for him. She first saw the fine young man while watching the Billy Graham Crusades on television. He sat next to the big man himself and she liked how his suit shined in the sunshine. It was enough to make a girl pull out her credit card and tithe online and that she did, adding a note—More where this came from should you email back stating the name of the spiritual being sitting left of the world’s finest preacher. Deacon Willis, came back

DOGS AND THE SMELL OF GIN by Scott Manley Hadley

December 17, 2018

In the years since my nan died, I’ve taken to drinking gin. She always smelt of it, it reminds me of her. I didn’t realise what her scent was until I was a student, only a few years before cancer killed her. One morning after a party, I woke up not alone and was confused by how vividly the smell of the room made me think of my grandmother. Diving into old memories, I sought repressed images of cross-generational incest, but (thankfully) there were none. I sniffed harder at the smell of the room and realised what I recognised and,

RHETORIC, GIRL! by Amie Norman Walker

December 16, 2018

Radio wire mutated with the Cicadas, every Midwest heart bled to this expectation. Knowing of no reason for time to come undone she perched herself on the couch as Carjone’s car snaked the driveway. Elevated humidity levels sweat the brows of every surface as evening rolled over, drooling for nightfall’s reprieve. Unstable minutes turned around the clocks face before he walked in with blood on his hands in a stride unfamiliar to her. She stared at him, her head cocked left and her lips pursed tight until they popped open with confusion. A need for her reflexed in his shadow.

THE HARVEST SEASON by Brian Morse

December 13, 2018

Henry had to abandon his car. It was clear that the winter storm had curbed all travel, as massive snow serpents slid across the vacant highway. Had he hit a deer, or was it a person? Either way, any visible evidence had disappeared, and the car wouldn’t start. He was on the highway miles from civilization, but the county’s landfill loomed close like a craggy white mountain, where a single soft green light pulsed. He fled for help. Snow quickly filled Henry’s boots as he plowed through a deer run toward the dump. Before squeezing through a small hole in

THE WEEPING NUDE by Jennifer Lewis

December 12, 2018

“Get up.” “No. It’s not even light out. I want to sleep.” “You heard me.” He lights a candle, then another. Then claps his hands. “Move!” She smells the turpentine. Hears the clinking of glass bottles. The room is freezing. Tiny sounds of the night drift through the walls. A horse kicks a stone, then neighs. “I’m not posing,” she says. “I’ve told you before. You never have to pose. You must be yourself.” The Weeping Nude, Edvard Munch 1913 This makes her smile. She likes being different than the others. Not another archetype, or myth or stupid symbol. How

CONTACT LESS by Adam Lock

December 11, 2018

Reaching with a blind hand, Rebecca pulls a loaf from the back row and reads its scarf. David buys the wrong sort; he buys bleached, ghost-bread, even though he knows she doesn’t like it. The price of bread is an economic barometer. There’s a trick to selling a house: bread in the oven. She sniffs the loaf. Bread is as old as farming, as old as the domesticated dog. She wants a dog. David doesn’t. In the UK, we throw six million loaves into our waterways each year. This disrupts the whole ecosystem and is bad news for amphibians, fish,

STILL, BIRDS by Nick Gregorio

December 10, 2018

Joe’s head bursts and fills the office with blue birds. Singing, chirping, flying figure eights around the ceiling fans. The red-faced, foamy-mouthed ranting Bill just popped Joe’s head with should’ve produced something more vicious. Snakes exploding in every direction like those gag cans sold at junk shops in malls. Or badgers, gnashing their teeth, snarling, sinking their teeth into people’s calf muscles. But blue birds flying, tweeting Jackson 5 tunes, swooping, diving, gliding, barrel rolling over the network of cubicles is…I guess that sort of thing just doesn’t add up for me. Standing in a mess of bird nest that

TO ANYONE WHO DOES NOT BELIEVE IN TIME MACHINES, I INVITE YOU TO MY PARENTS’ HOUSE by Georgia Bellas

December 9, 2018

I wash dishes. I am 12, 27, 14, 19, 31. I am two in a yellow shirt and checked shorts and a bowl cut standing on a chair at the sink, hands clasped above the soapy water, grinning open-mouthed at the camera while my mother is in the hospital recovering from another Cesarean section. I am nearly 43. The age my grandmother died. There are bubbles. Lots of bubbles only my mother can make, her knuckles raw and red. We use a dishcloth here, not a sponge. There are systems. Taxonomies unfathomable to the uninitiated. Flour is in the second