Fiction

MIND WHAT’S GOOD by L Mari Harris

September 9, 2019

The girl sits on her old teeter totter in the backyard, eating mini marshmallows out of a bag. Pushes off. Crick. Down. Crick. Pushes off again. Crick. Pork Chop the Chihuahua watches each marshmallow go from fingers to mouth, cocking one eyebrow, then the other. A man in a black suit and hat walks down the alley. It’s early August, 98 degrees. He has something in his hand. “Hey, Mister! What’s in your hand?” The man stops at the fence and holds a hammer and a bar of soap up. The girl and Pork Chop stare. Mrs. Potter from three

STURM UND DRANG by Paweł Markiewicz

September 9, 2019

My first sole little letter calling all ringing so beauteously muse-like and winged like the eternal, gentle pinion of a melancholic harp. Dear valued mellow quaint readers-dreamers! At 5.30 pm, the meek time has come with the dream-full inception, so that a new flimsy Sturm und Drang period has begun (the second Sturm und Drang, to wit: the turquoise time). And I am spellbound therefrom simply. Such a miracle with a starry charm of a magic-full summer night has enforced some fantasy. Any poem from me and any glimmer of the philosophy from me hasn’t achieved that. But rather, the

WE THE PEOPLE by Nicholas Grider

September 8, 2019

WE THE PEOPLE Hi there! Thank you for your patience as you adjust to our way of life. We are the people. We’re just like you, except our clothing is less wrinkled and our databases are better organized. We’re grateful you allowed us to ask you to welcome us in, and then kindly gave your consent to our decision to stay. LET’S JOIN HANDS IN THANKFULNESS We like it here. The reason we like it here is because this is where we are, which makes things a lot more convenient for everyone, especially us. That’s what we mean

SNAPSHOT BEFORE THE INCIDENT by Brian Brunson

September 6, 2019

With no foreboding of the approaching cataclysm, an orange brown finch, pecking at fallen crumbs, is startled by a fat gray pigeon flying down; a nervous young man watches the barista behind the cart in the courtyard; the barista clears the moist used espresso grounds from the filter with two loud thwacks against the rubber bar as her phone chimes in a text message from that boy listed under her contacts as ‘tinydicpic’; the sun hits the four story glass building reflecting the five story concrete building opposite; a broad shouldered well-suited man holds the hand of his elderly father,

LOVE RUNS AWAY TO JOIN THE CIRCUS by Kieron Walquist

September 4, 2019

The Ringleader lets the circus run itself into the ground, unsupervised. Ever since the accident, he hides himself in his trailer. Away from the police, the press, the public. All who lie in wait outside, hunched and hungry. Ready to ambush. Ready to accuse: how could you let this happen? Confined by choice, the ringleader doesn’t eat much. Drinks religiously. Sleeps. Occasionally peeks behind the dusty blinds at the sun. You stay with him in his misery. Longing to be loved. But he refuses to want you. Says: you don’t belong in the circus! Go home. You tell him the

A CHILDHOOD IN FIVE ACTS by Suzanne Craig-Whytock

September 3, 2019

Out back behind the house, there was a rusty old oil drum that Da used late at night for burning stuff. Once Sammy and I found what looked like some kind of animal bones in it, but we didn’t dare ask about the kitten that Sammy had found the week before. This is how I grew up. I couldn’t help Sammy, I couldn’t save him because he would always cry, even when I whispered, “Don’t cry, don’t.” He couldn’t stop his eyes from leaking like a broken tap, that’s what Da would call him, “Ya fucking little broken tap,” and

JUDITH, MOTHER by Matthew Lovitt

August 11, 2019

Judith didn’t want to force the boy, but Jacob refused the chance to be reborn in His image. Willow, the regression therapist, said he suffered a PTSD-like disease, and that simulating a second birth would release him from the trauma of years of processed food, daycare by television. And so she held tight the down blanket wrapped around his body, the mock vaginal lips that parted at the crown of his head. He kicked and screamed, and she whispered that soon they would be together again. Willow said, Again? And Judith imagined what it would be like to cut the

SLEEPY TIGER by Matthew Bookin

August 9, 2019

Paul started doing deliveries. He was 19 days sober. The passenger side of his car still looked like a carefully crushed soda can. The travel bottle of Listerine was still in his glove box. Emir’s food truck business had expanded into an actual restaurant. Paul was hired on as their 31-year-old delivery boy. He picked up racks of steamed dumplings from the restaurant and loaded them into the back of his nearly defeated red car. It was early summer and sometimes, mostly on the weekends, he could be out making deliveries until dawn. He felt quiet and newly alive. He

AS SEEN ON TV by Kyra Kondis

August 8, 2019

Bedazzler It’s your idea to go as KISS for your first real Halloween party in your freshman year of high school, and of course nobody warns you that your three friends will back out of the costume at the last second. You won’t get their text until your mother drops you off a block away from the party’s actual location. A few weeks before, you’d begged her for the $19.95 you needed to punch plastic rhinestones up and down the legs of too-small black jeans; you have to wear these jeans. It starts to drizzle before you get to the

TO MY SON AND ONLY CHILD: YOUR MOTHER IS CLOSE TO FADING by Nathan Elias

August 7, 2019

This may come as a shock, but since my death I’ve spent copious hours (each hour a lifetime) relearning the laws of the living. I rediscovered what it means to mourn when you wept capriciously at the side of my casket. I’ve also reimagined gravity as the weight of my sorrows sifts through the sieve of time’s welcoming hands. But now, my boy, my final hour is upon me. The hourglass drains, and so I must transmit, as well as the dead are able, these lessons I’ve procured since the time we spoke last: The dead’s days, too, are numbered.