ISSUE 17 Archives

TOPPLED by Julie Zuckerman

March 7, 2019 · Fiction

The crowds coursing the streets below Marjorie’s apartment cheer and chant, and she hurries downstairs. Withered wives and working girls, wheelchair-bound and beach-bronzed beauties, one of the most spectacular sights she’s seen in her 68 years. They beckon to Marjorie, but she hesitates, grounded in place. Her uneasiness hovers around her like a swarm of midges. The most beaten down have ascended on the capital, together with bejeweled matrons of Madison Avenue, minivan-driving moms, and those in thread-bare, torn coats. With each stride, they discard the delicate attributes absorbed since birth, casting aside mantles of caregiver, nurturer, defender, peacemaker, forgiver,…

x-r-a-y magazine

THE WHOLE FLOW by Angie McCullagh

March 5, 2019 · Fiction

I try to become liquid like she told me. I pour myself into heavy-bottomed glasses and over nubby sofas and down rucked, tan chests. I puddle onto the floor and sometimes throw myself into the wind only to splash back on bug-splattered windshields. To survive, she said, you have to learn to go with it. But my mother’s advice is bad. I learn this when my boy is first diagnosed and I think we can do it, I am flexible, Watch me drain my whole body into his syringes and make him better. I will do anything, anything at all….

x-r-a-y magazine

NILSSON SCHMILSSON by Anthony Sabourin

March 5, 2019 · Fiction

I was outside on my street watching an apartment building on fire. I was watching it with the people who lived in that building, the people who’d left it. At three floors, it wasn’t a big apartment building, but it was a big fire. It was crackling, and flames were shooting out of windows and smoke was filling the night sky. I looked at everybody. It was nighttime when the fire started, and so you could see these snapshots of how people were living inside their homes. A couple wore rumpled office clothes paired with sweatpants, caught between two routines….

x-r-a-y magazine

PISS by Chad Miller

March 4, 2019 · Fiction

Every time I piss myself, I get the job. Every time. It’s a fact. The first time I pissed myself was in the restroom at the office park with the ring of palm trees, before an interview. Let’s just agree my stream was spirited and leave the cause. Piss ricocheted. I cleaned what I could at the sink. I got that job back-coding home remodeler websites with a soaked crotch. I wore gray slacks. The stain became a black hole the recruiter must have hoped to gaze my dick through. That hope, or is it the smell, that hypnotizes every…

x-r-a-y magazine

WE ETERNAL BEINGS by Jody Sperling

March 3, 2019 · Fiction

Mary died earlier this week: went into the hospital for routine foot ulcer debridement—common with diabetics—developed a staph infection, went under for a lung treatment and never woke from the anesthesia. We knew Mary from back in the day. I’d moved to Omaha to live with my grandparents, found Jesus (it’s not what you think) so I sent my buddy to live with them (proselytizers got to be proselytizing). My grandparents prayed before every meal. Mary was a banker who worked with my buddy in Omaha. Obesity led to her diabetes, which triggered her demise. Demise. What a word. It…

x-r-a-y magazine

INHERITANCE by Cavin Bryce Gonzalez

February 27, 2019 · Fiction

When she came hopping out of the bathroom holding an instrument that I mistook as a thermometer I was appalled that someone could be so happy about running a fever. She threw her arms around me and squeezed, squeezed like she hated me. But she didn’t hate me. She loved me. And that’s when I saw the two little lines, bright pink, glaring at me. It’s been four months since then. We’re having a boy. Every day her womb grows, life gestates. All of our friends are so excited. “You’re glowing!” they say. Or “About time!” Every night I watch…

x-r-a-y magazine

MICROWAVE OVEN by Estrella del Valle (translated by Toshiya Kamei)

February 25, 2019 · Fiction, Translation

Don’t say my name, don’t say my name, when you know I have died, don’t say my name. -Roque Dalton I don’t know how it happened. I only remember walking in the woods with my strawberry basket. I wanted to pick a lot of strawberries on the way because my grandmother likes homemade cakes. She used to make them before she bought her house and had to spend many hours outside. She made them with egg white foams. The secret is to beat yolks and butter well, first yolks, then butter, and whip it for a long time, pour in…

x-r-a-y magazine

B.C. by Patrick Reid

February 24, 2019 · Fiction

I am running as a conservative in the primaries. My name is a big one, recognizable throughout most of the world. Last month I was on a cruise with my wife and her family. There were two formal nights. My belly. My belly heaved and burst over my belt, and on sauce night, I dropped a splash onto my button down, right on the part of my belly that, when I sit down, has the same presence as a balance ball. In college, a friend and I used the balance ball to do sit ups, 35 each, 3 times, on…

x-r-a-y magazine

EXCERPT FROM ‘ALL PRETTY SORE’ by Alec Berry

February 22, 2019 · Fiction

David met me at the McDonalds and we bought McChickens before walking next door to buy 40s / Went to his apartment and drank, and then his roommate’s girlfriend came by and she told us how she slept with a dude in his 50s because it’d be something to write about / Ended up drunk late in the evening after the 40s because David kept a case of Hamm’s in the fridge, and then we called Walker, and I met Walker, and I realized Walker was weird, and we ran through the streets to my apartment and partied with the…

x-r-a-y magazine

LIKE A FIRE DRILL by Gary Duncan

February 21, 2019 · Fiction

1 They found him in the stairwell, two days later. Wedged behind the door, his hand still clutching his chest. We had to evacuate the building and wait in the car park like it was a fire drill. All in our designated places, like we’d practiced. Editorial near the gates, then IT, then Sales, then Warehouse and Support. Some of the salespeople sloped off early, said they were going to the pub to sink a few for him. It’s what he would have wanted. He didn’t even drink. One of the women from IT, the one he liked but was…

x-r-a-y magazine

12 Next »