Fiction

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

September 9, 2024

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

CONGRATULATIONS by Graeme Bezanson

September 4, 2024

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

LEGATO TONGUE by Timothy Boudreau

August 29, 2024

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

THE ARTIST by Ruby Zuckerman

August 27, 2024

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

THE STUYVESANT BEE by Mike Topp

August 21, 2024

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

August 19, 2024

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

TAKE HEART by Sean Craypo

August 14, 2024

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.

AN ELEGY FOR COACH by Ravi Mangla

August 12, 2024

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

A HOLE TO DIE IN by Sarah Butler

August 7, 2024

The Yucca Valley had plenty of pool cleaners, but none as good as him. Jeb started cleaning pools because he didn’t want to sell meth like his cousins Rob, Kyle, Tyler, and Clay. He liked the roteness of skimming the surface of the water with his net, the reading of pH strips, and the satisfaction of a job well done. He’d cleaned some of the most beautiful pools in the desert – he even did the one at Sinatra’s house once. But what he really wanted to do was own a vintage cowboy boot store. He was born and raised

FRUIT AND FRACTIONS by Taleen V.

August 5, 2024

On the table apricots blush, sliced to their stony seeds. A faded bowl of walnut brains sits untouched and long wet spears of cucumber sweat beside them. Goods grown right here in Fresno, just like you. The professor picks you up by the waist and sets you next to the spread. His beard is silver spangled and his brows touch. He resembles your uncle Varouj who plays the piano at Christmastime, except this man doesn’t smile as much. Until his grab, it had not crossed your mind to be afraid. “You can always trust Armenians, they’re family,” your mom once