X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine | Fiction

FLORIDA MAN by Bridget Adams

September 13, 2024 · Fiction

THE MAN SITTING ON MY COUCH HAS OBTAINED HIS ALLIGATOR HARVEST PERMIT Yes, it’s true! We haven’t fucked yet but soon you’ll be crouched in the greased dark of a velvet panhandle midnight, your rifle pointed squarely in the center of an alligator’s long flat head, between the ridges of its eyes. The animal’s body looks like a topographic map, bone-hard hills and valleys laid over with skin too tough for bullets at anything but close range. “Alligators are really hard to kill,” you say, and I want to give the curve of your ear one long lick as you…

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PATATINA by Rosalind Margulies

September 11, 2024 · Fiction

My boss is a dog and today is the dog’s birthday. Okay, not really. I like to say that my boss is a dog, but it’s just one of those things you say to make it easier, you know? But it is her birthday. The dog’s name is Patatina, which is Italian for little potato. The dog’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Bianchi, are Italian. I’m from India or at least my grandparents are. And Patatina is a Papillon. (Patatina can also mean pussy. In case you were wondering.) Here: Lake Oswego, 15 minutes from downtown Portland but several income brackets…

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YOU WORK IN THE WORST DINER IN EXISTENCE THAT’S ALWAYS OPEN FOR BUSINESS by Avitus B. Carle

September 9, 2024 · Fiction

Where the brown leather stools and chairs suction to the patrons’ skin until they bruise. Where the tables wobble and the menus are always sticky and the food listed changes every day. The bar is slanted and the floor dips and your uniform remains the same except for the endless supply of toothpicks you carry in the pockets of your apron. Where you are the only employee. Where food cooks itself. Where you can gaze at a new apocalypse just outside the window every time the bell that hangs over the door sings a brand-new carol and a new customer…

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CONGRATULATIONS by Graeme Bezanson

September 4, 2024 · Fiction

After work I met Alexa because we were trying out the idea that we could be just friends. Together we walked to Barnes & Noble where they were having an event for Dan Dashiell, author of a celebrated sad novel about a dying husband who spends the last month of his life teaching his wife how to cook the family’s favorite meals. Every chapter is a different dish and life lesson. Alexa knew Dan from the internet and I think they read together once, before he became a successful young novelist. Also I believe he was at one point fucking…

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LEGATO TONGUE by Timothy Boudreau

August 29, 2024 · Fiction

In the mid-eighties most Prescott High band members cheat on the terminology test, since Mr. Madison can’t see past the front row. Brass and woodwinds retreat toward the percussion section, sit with answer keys on their music stands. Percussionist Colin Andrews sits alone, no cheat sheet, scores a 96%. All three percussionists, Colin, Danny Gabriel, and Liz Reynolds, live in Perch Hollow Trailer Park. Colin gets it: growing up on the poor side of town naturally makes them want to pound the shit out of something. Liz lets all the neighborhood boys practice on her in her father’s shed; they…

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THE ARTIST by Ruby Zuckerman

August 27, 2024 · Fiction

A––––– hasn’t been anywhere, or seen anybody, since her unemployment money ran out. Iron wind chimes jangle when she knocks on the door, and jangle again when it opens. Someone named Sara leads her to a table in the center of the shop. Sara is wearing a cloth mask with a red and white geometric print, which makes A––––– feel self conscious about her own KN-95, like she showed up wearing a suit when Sara is just wearing a cozy sweater. Everything inside of the room is white, everything outside is gray. This makes any small moment of color extremely…

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THE STUYVESANT BEE by Mike Topp

August 21, 2024 · Fiction

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EXCERPTS FROM ‘AMERICAN AIR’ by Mike Topp, featuring art by William Wegman

August 19, 2024 · Fiction

BUY A COPY OF ‘AMERICAN AIR’ HERE SPOKESPERSON FOR MELLINGER CO., LOS ANGELES, CALIF., DEPT. 54 Friends, you’ve heard me speak before in praise of Barns for Nobles. Well I’m no longer with that company. I’m here today to tell you about a new product I’m even more enthusiastic about called Count Branula. It’s a new cereal that tastes like bran. In fact I can’t even tell the difference. THE EARLIEST SALADS Probably the earliest salads were nothing more than some greens dumped in a bowl. VASE I was at Mom’s and I dropped this…

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TAKE HEART by Sean Craypo

August 14, 2024 · Fiction

The human heart on the street wasn’t mine. It came from the crumpled body thirty feet away. Another thirty feet behind the body was a pair of boots, which may or may not have had feet in them. Just behind the boots was the sedan. The bumper was barely dented from where it had struck the man. A severed vein sticking out of the heart looked big enough to stick my thumb into. Black skid marks streaked the fat on the lower part, as if someone had plucked out the heart and skipped it like a stone across the street….

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AN ELEGY FOR COACH by Ravi Mangla

August 12, 2024 · Fiction

We shook on it. If we won the final game of the season, Coach would run fifty laps around the gym. Some time around the eighth lap he collapsed and died. Some of us cried. Others stood in monastic silence. McClusky threw up in the Gatorade cooler. Coach’s death was relayed on the morning announcements after news that the cafeteria was out of waffle fries. This was not, we believed, the memorial Coach would have wanted. He loved waffle fries. We felt an obligation then, a hefty responsibility, to give Coach the send-off he would have wanted. After all, Coach…

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