Fiction

THE JANNICK OVERTURE by Avee Chaudhuri

March 20, 2018

Nacogdoches, Texas Jannick Meissner claimed to be from Eastern Bavaria. He spoke theatrically, e.g. “I will revenge myself upon Castro.” Castro had slighted Jannick by not inviting him to an ongoing, Sunday afternoon table-top role playing game. Jannick was livid. “I am an excellent storyteller,” he told me. We were drinking on Jannick’s front porch. I sat and he paced back and forth in a very tortured manner. “I will revenge myself upon Castro,” he repeated. “You don’t even like role playing games,” I pointed out. “This is accurate,” Jannick conceded. Jannick was a very cultured, seemingly intelligent German male

FROG POND by Chad Redden

March 19, 2018

After you open the door lying on the bottom of the pond it can go two ways. The door will open to deeper water that shimmers in an unusual way. The water behind the door connects to another pond, in another world. To get there, you will swim downward, through the doorway. You will force every bit of air from your lungs, to keep you from floating upward, remaining in your world. When this doesn’t help you will grab onto the door frame, pull yourself through the doorway to the other side. Or The door will open the door to

“NO BOOK BLURB, NO CRY” EXCERPT by Brian Alan Ellis

March 16, 2018

An Inspirational/Crazy Informative Guide to Proper Book Blurbage (An excerpt from Sad Laughter, forthcoming from Civil Coping Mechanisms) “[This book] will fry up some prose eggs in your ol’ brain pan.” ⋆⋆⋆ “[This writer] is the kind of poet whose madness and how [he/she] exorcises that madness is a thing of dark brilliance one can admire from afar but if you ever let [him/her] crash at your house for a few days [he/she] would scare the living shit out of you.” ⋆⋆⋆ “[This writer] can fix your pipes and your roofing but [his/her] book of durable, brick-layered stories can also

ON OUR WAY TO SEE YOU by Ashley Hutson

March 15, 2018

Right now we’re stuck behind a funeral procession and it looks like we’re going to be late. Mack keeps saying, How long, how long? We’re on our way to see you. I adjust the rear-view mirror, and Mack is in the back seat, bouncing around. He never settles down when the car goes slow, refuses to be lulled like other children, does not even want to be sung to. He’s saying, How long, how long? And it is about noon right now, and it is a beautiful day and it is November. There is a hearse way up at the

ANATOMY OF A DISTANCE by Elle Nash

March 12, 2018

A list of things you miss. A touch with the lips. The knock-you-on-your-ass touch, the kind that starts in the lower extremity of the leg below the ankle, as he moves closer to you, the kind where he waits for you to wrap your ammunition around him and then he pulls you in and you press with your lips pursed and slightly parted, like an immature form of animal or insect which undergoes some metamorphosis on this fucked earth, together with all of its countries, peoples and natural features which hide in our internal organs, a pear-shaped enlargement of the

YOU ALWAYS GET CAUGHT ON THE LAST ONE by Steve Anwyll

March 11, 2018

Ain’t it always the case. I’m bored as fuck. Life’s like that. So I fill my coat pockets with cans of beer. Drink as I cruise the streets. Stopping to look in windows that aren’t obstructed. And ain’t it always the case? You get caught on the last one. The whole night going good. Then blammo. Out of nowhere. It’s over. Some fucking do-gooder concerned citizen. Prodding into affairs that ain’t their own. Acting tough. And as soon as they start yelling. You know you’re sunk. Like tonight. I’m standing there in the darkness. Behind these shrubs. Tall ones. I

MR. ANGEL by Jennifer Greidus

March 10, 2018

She was no Ingrid. She was more of a Pat, or even a “Chuck,” but she was no Ingrid. An Ingrid would never own a truck stop on 85, and an Ingrid would never tell blue jokes to men who haven’t bathed in a couple weeks. When her daughter, my lover, took me there to eat, Ingrid always saved us a booth in the corner, away from Manuel, Jim, and Shaky, because those three stank more than anyone. While she was alive and in her thirties and forties, Ingrid had two wishes. One of them was to bowl a perfect

LISTEN, MY SISTER, LISTEN by Gary J. Shipley

March 9, 2018

He watched his legs grow from the armpits of his baby sister every day for a year. Both white calves there on the door of the fridge whenever he looked, and around them the arms of his sisters that through some mistake of birth were limited to two. Their eyes and feet and ears likewise dyadic. And the things they had only one of absurdly depleted in this same way. Your sister was never more than one, the mothers kept saying. For the mother-body also seemed to be hiding someone else inside it, without any admission as to why it

DANIEL, MOSTLY by Nathan Dragon

March 8, 2018

He always felt like he needed things to be told to him. Bed and drinking water were always good, though. Something like that, so his TV would easily be a good distraction and some rest. People’s voices, anyways, were fine. He worried a lot. Daniel needed something that could help with that. Nothing too scandalous, though. Everything as it comes, as he could handle it or it could be handled. One at a time, please, he’d say. Why did he walk away? Cause he couldn’t handle it. Missed the point. Did it anyways instead of not doing anything. To feel

IN CARS by William Lessard

March 8, 2018

1 The car stopped turning. Jay would drive to the deli, reverse the process once the six-pack or bag of 40s was chilling his inner thighs. The job of the person with him was to rotate their head to the middle of their back. Bumper distance within ten feet required a preemptory “Yo.” In tighter circumstances, random curses were substituted. Increasing volume emphasized proximity of the parked car/oncoming vehicle/pedestrian. Walking the five blocks was never a consideration. 2 My father’s car was parked in the yard with hedges growing from one of the wheels. On the screen in front of