Fiction

DINNER by Christopher Linforth

April 25, 2020

At that time in our lives, we rose at dusk for the feeding shift. Still in our underwear, we crept downstairs and into the kitchen. Shiny black bugs skittered across the tile floor. The lazy cockroaches remained on the counter and in the tinfoil containers stinking of rotten noodles; a few silvery beetles disappeared into the seal of the refrigerator. In the living room our mother railed at the television, at the caregiver exiting the house. We heard calls for dinner, thuds on the floor, shouts for our dead father. We rubbed crust from our eyes, then surveyed the leftovers

AFTER AUSCHWITZ by Howie Good

April 24, 2020

To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. – Theodor W. Adorno We were taken off the train at night. “What are those bonfires?” I asked. A sarcastic male voice said from out of the dark, “You’ll find out, child.” It felt like I was on a bridge and there were two or three heavy trucks and the bridge was rocking—but there were no trucks. Even cows wondered what was happening. At one point we seemed to be following Beethoven’s footsteps through Vienna. Although democracy was dead, women and young girls were smashing jars of blood on the sidewalk in a

GATSBY EFFECT by Erika Veurink

April 23, 2020

The first time I had pneumonia, I wanted it to be seismic. I wanted it to almost kill me. Being fatalistic felt grown up. I laid in the West Village, drank gin from a jar and stared at where the wall hit the ceiling, the cross-like convergence, forever. “There are crosses everywhere.” That’s what my basketball coach told me once before a game. If I was nervous or worried about a freethrow, I would look for a cross–in the rafters, the painted lines of the court, the referee’s stripes. And salvation meant something. The first time I had pneumonia, when

FIRST KISS AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Chelsea Voulgares

April 22, 2020

Convinced they were the only people alive in their shit California town, Opal and Matt sat together in a coffin in the basement of the funeral home Matt’s family owned. They planned to get as drunk as possible on the top shelf whiskey they’d looted the week before. “Give me the chips. I’m starving,” Opal said. When Matt handed them to her, she caressed his fingertips. He stared at her and scratched his nose. First came the droughts and then the fires. The air had crisped up. All that was nothing compared to what happened to the water, which in

MANDALA by Vallie Lynn Watson

April 21, 2020

He always walked me to my car when I left his house after sex, so stealing his albums was tricky. Not stealing. Borrowing. I started in month two, initially one album at a time, always only the record itself. He’d have to excuse himself to the restroom five or six times an evening, and I’d barefoot across his new carpet to just outside his bedroom, where the shelves began. I would slip an album out of the cover and into my messenger bag, take them home until our next engagement—he usually asked me back within a week—and after sex, put

A EULOGY by Michael Hendery

April 20, 2020

Cynthia B. Hurley, known online as @iBrake4Corgis17, was a well-connected woman visible across the social media landscape. Her beloved Instagram feed totaled 12,574 posts, and she amassed 836 followers after more than twenty-five years of daily engagement with the app. Cindy’s all-time, most-liked post was a photo from October 2031 of her wearing a Davy Crockett raccoon-skin cap, pretending to strangle the eight-foot-tall stuffed grizzly bear in the lobby of the Fern Creek Lodge which garnered 529 likes and spawned dozens of comments, including the expected accolades from her dear friends @tango4one and @winediva77. This post’s popularity surpassed her previous

THE MOON GOES ON by Lydia Copeland Gwyn

April 19, 2020

The tea warms through the paper cup and through my gloves. A tiny island of pleasure in the winter air outside my car. My head is still reeling with the conversations of the night. Friends from upstate New York, who drove here in their Prius. Their gentleman toddler who sat in the backseat through miles of I-81 without one solitary meltdown. The straw-bale guest house they want to construct next summer, where we can all stay when we visit. We being any friend who wishes to make the 12-hour drive. I can’t help but look up because the trees are

EVENTUALLY NOTHING’S COMING BACK by Gabrielle Griffis

April 18, 2020

First they converted five-thousand year-round homes into summer rentals. The number of Airbnbs and zoning regulations filled the ponds with nitrogen and cyanobacteria, stuff that evolved 2.7 billion years ago. You stare at a sign that says keep kids away from scum. You think, something is desperately wrong, but folks just shrug, elated that the remaining ponds are six degrees hotter. A woman in a bathing suit reads the same sign. “I’m glad I won’t be around to see what happens!” she says, snapping swimming goggles over hair the color of spider silk. She details her upcoming trip to a coral

THE BIRD by Mary Widdicks

April 17, 2020

There’s mud between my toes. Slimy, sticky, and covering the chipped pink polish that now decorates only the tips of my big toenails. It’ll be gone the next time Mom cuts them. The ground is hot even though the sun is starting to duck behind the trees, and I can’t stand still for very long or it burns the bottoms of my feet. I hop from grass patch to molehill along the side of the road, avoiding gravel and broken glass like a game of hopscotch, and trying desperately not to spill the water from the bucket dangling from my

A VERY SHORT STORY ABOUT TWO (THREE) FORMER FRIENDS by Eli S. Evans

April 15, 2020

On my fortieth birthday, my old friend A– sent me the following message: “Happy birthday, bro. Mark Fisher summited Everest last week.” As Mark Fisher and I hadn’t been friends for at least twenty years, this news was not meaningful to me except in so far as it provided a measure relative to which all of my own accomplishments in life suddenly appeared quite meager. And on the day of my fortieth birthday, no less! In bitterness, I composed the following reply: “That’s cool, but not as cool as when I summited your mom last night,” and only after not