x-r-a-y magazine, Author at X-R-A-Y

SHOPPING AT TARGET WITH MY E̶X̶-̶L̶O̶V̶E̶R̶ FRIEND by Cat Dixon

June 10, 2021 · Creative Nonfiction

You say you need to find an ointment that your father asked for, so we’re in the pharmacy department: shelves full of pain relief, allergy relief, gas relief, dietary supplements. Last year I heard that big brand companies pay more for eye-level shelf space; someone had studied how we shop, and then schemed and plotted for that cough syrup and nose spray’s spot. You’re searching the shelves closest to the floor, and I keep getting in the way. The aisles are crowded with carts and gray-haired ladies—excuse me—so I wander to the end-cap filled with bandages and Neosporin. I select…

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THREE TRIPTYCHS WITHIN A TRIPTYCH, OR: SPINACH PIE by Benjamin Niespodziany

June 9, 2021 · Fiction

a multi-level triptych [1] Woodsman’s Lint-Licked Pockets after Leśnik, the Slavik forest deity [a] Woodsman protects the forest by writing messages into the rocks. Messages in clock talk Woodsman doesn’t understand. Messages in dirt. In fur. In bark. Important forest, he writes. Formative forest. Former corner, cornered form. [b] With beard of grass and vine, Woodsman wears skin of reed and tree and string. His stomach is a lake of fish. The torch he carries bares a blue flame. It assists in guiding his moon, in practicing the magic of being alone. Silence hangs like a stranger…

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AT A LEMON-COLORED HOUSE ON CALLE D by Ray Ball

June 7, 2021 · Fiction

The day before Myradis Guzmán died, the tropical sun boiled off some of the rainwater that shrouded and smoothed the cracks in Havana’s sidewalks. She sorted grains of rice and hung out laundry under the watchful eye of a statuette of Yemayá. She chatted with neighbors on her way to ETECSA. When she arrived, she secured her place as la última and slipped into a wisp of shade to wait her turn. After her heart suddenly stopped, her body remained in her house for over a week, while her brother Yordani navigated bureaucratic tapestries of red tape. Waiting was so…

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“HANKS HAND” by Michael Seymour Blake

June 5, 2021 · Comics, Michael Seymour Blake, Wildly Inconsistent Comics

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SOUR by Wilson Koewing

June 2, 2021 · Fiction

To escape the midsummer heat, I ducked inside a bar specializing in sour beers on the fringes of Five Points in Denver. I ordered from the happy hour menu, drank sour pours then had my debit card declined. “I tried it nine times,” the shaggy hair bartender said. “Try it again.” “Won’t go through.” “I don’t know what to tell you.” Another bartender, one of those effortlessly beautiful women who always seem marooned in restaurants, came over. “Nice ink,” I said, noticing an eight ball on her wrist. “Do you have another card?” she asked. “I don’t,” I said. “Where…

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NOAH’S MILLENNIUM SOLILOQUY by Maggie Nye

May 31, 2021 · Fiction

I am building a space ark. I have the raw materials to begin. Many can be salvaged from the junkyard, which is the humble throne room of heaven’s inheritors. Not that I believe in metaphors. We are all best served speaking simply, plainly, and with a cube of bullion under our tongues. I have collected 130,000 pounds of aluminum rather easily. It took the better part of a century, but I am blessed with dreamless sleep all nights except Sunday, when I drown myself again and again in my indoor jacuzzi until my wife prepares the coffee. To make a…

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LONELINESS AND HEARTACHE IN THE DISCARDED APPLE CORE PIT OF AMERICA’S ROTTED DREAM FOR AND OF ITSELF by Nathaniel Duggan

May 21, 2021 · Fiction

Lately Frank has been feeling especially Frank-like, his days reduced to the potato chip crumbs he has failed to brush from his lap—as if he, the essence of himself, is a shirt that can be slipped on or off and has been worn perhaps a few too many weeks in a row. He wets the bed more than when he was a child, although back then his piss was hot and searing as shame, whereas now it is simply cold as a metal unexpectedly touched. His sweat, too, is cold. His dreams are muggy as incest, bratty stepsiblings fucked. He…

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A DAUGHTER NEEDS A NAME LIKE AN AMULET by Sara Comito

May 20, 2021 · Fiction

She wakes up laughing at her dream that she is a chest of drawers with a single knob in the middle. She wakes to find her belly button has popped like a Butterball turkey thermometer. She dreams she is eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She wakes and makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She drinks from the milk carton and guzzles down half its contents. She dreams she is a milk carton. She wakes to find her nightgown is wet with her first milk. Mmmmmm she breathes. It smells delicious. She dreams she is weighing grapefruits in…

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ON THE SUGGESTION OF ROADKILL WALKS by Evan James Sheldon

May 19, 2021 · Fiction

I hear an odd sound and go out front to investigate only to find my mother holding a vulture on a leash with a harness like people buy for tiny yippee dogs. There’s snow on the ground and on the pine trees by the house and I can see where they’ve been by the tracks. She’s been walking the vulture through the neighborhood. And now she’s walking it back and forth out front and it hops and waddles, occasionally flapping once or twice. It’s large enough that I bet if it really wanted to fly away my mother wouldn’t be…

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TROY JAMES WEAVER DOES A LITTLE CHATTING WITH GRAHAM IRVIN

May 18, 2021 · Interviews & Reviews

Troy James Weaver is the author of Wichita Stories, Visions, Marigold, Temporal, and Selected Stories. His work often centers around young and vulnerable characters from rural areas struggling to fit into the world. He writes with an unparalleled rawness in quick, powerful bursts. A Troy James Weaver novel is quick and slim, but will change the way you think about writing and people both. In a blurb for Temporal, Scott McClanahan wrote, “[Troy] is our Witold Gombrowicz.” For Marigold, Michael Bible wrote, “[he] is the poet-laureate of Midwestern absurdity with a heart a mile wide.” Dennis Cooper wrote, as a blurb for Selected Stories, Troy’s collection out with…

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