SHORT STORY ARCHIVES

They wrecked the halls when the whiskey eggnog was snuck into the dorm after finals ended. Jeff was everyone’s hero. He bootlegged enough to of the ‘nog to keep everyone lit and alive until New Years. No one has to leave, joy demanded it. Parents were concerned within hours, though. Then snotty, boggy vomit fell from the dorm’s roof as …

In was the summer of 1963. We lived on the fifth floor of a high rise in Sunnyside, Queens, close to the cemetery where my relatives were buried, the Queensboro Bridge, and the EL tracks. Our terrace had a view of the large water tanks by the river, and a great big bakery billboard. It was heaven. Though I didn’t …

Jim looked out of his upstairs apartment window. He watched as a drunken man staggered up to the door of the Bus Cafe. It was late. No doubt after a night of drinking he was going for a burger and fries, or some greasy chili. Jim and his wife Brenda rented one of two apartments that were above the New …

Springtime we used to drink mostly in our favorite joint 50/50, anywhere closer was dangerous cuz cops might appear at any time. Our guys drank Three Axes, cheap rotgut, and talked, especially sport and politics. Sometimes they went out to take a leak and some of them never came back. On that very evening I got loaded. As usual. All …

Chicharras, I think, was the last word you taught me. Cariño was the first. The other day Erica told me cochinada and I’ve asked her several times to repeat it, same way I did with chicharras and you. Chingao was the very first, back, back, back when still living in that little hovel off N. St. Mary’s St. with Teresa …

A tandem bicycle was the last thing Liz and I bought before she left me for her personal trainer, a muscle-bound guy named Zeke. “I’m never coming back,” she told me as they drove off on his Harley. “Fine!” I yelled after her. “See if I care.” Except, I did care. I missed her a lot; for a while anyway. …

Matt went outside to smoke and play with his phone. Quentin started on the dishes. Everybody had ordered the lasagna, so the dishes had to soak in the hot soapy water forever. This loosened up the dried sauce and cheese but the water got so filthy so fast that he had to drain and refill the sink three times in …

The fighter jet decimates each cloud. Smoke cloaks each house with a pall of dust. The smell of burning tires enhances the stench of smoldering rubbish that emanates from the metal containers punctuating our streets and lanes. A car squeals its venom terrorizing the heart of night. The rattle of bullets rends the air like a snake, ensnared. I inhale …

His feet couldn’t handle the pavement. His figure couldn’t bend to the shape of the doorway. But he forced his way along—through the entrance of the bar. Therein, it bustled. A sort of grime laid overtop everything. It went further than the cigar smoke that hung in the air and the groaning tune that played on the jukebox. It was …

When I was in the seventh grade, I wrote a terrific and revealing story. I gave it to my English teacher to read. She lost it. Because I was proud of the story, I rewrote it several times trying to get it back. Each of the versions varied slightly, but the basics never altered. I was young and beautiful. I …

I still can’t believe it, it can’t be real. There must have been a mistake. They can’t really be after you. You’re one of the nicest people I know, one of the most protective people I know. What you did shouldn’t have surprised me. I should’ve seen it coming. ••• You’ve no idea how incredibly guilty I feel. I should …

This article first appeared in the Portland Press-Herald on February 8, 2046 Milton Schaefer of Portland was the first American to have a digital copy of his mind implanted into a robot. Schaefer, who had been in ill health, started going to Eternity, Inc. in Freeport last July. At Eternity, Inc. technicians were able to make copy the contents of …

Willie Ortloff knew Pamela Sunshine was going to crash through his front door in about a minute and a half and begin asking questions — questions for which he had no satisfactory answers.  He dreaded what was coming. Willie ran a straight shop. His work was immaculate and he had ethics. That ought to mean something. He had the only …

Frances browsing a thrift store, operated by the animal shelter, noticed a wire cage on the floor. She leaned down to have a closer look, “Well, well, what do we have here?” She glanced at the salesclerk. “Is this puppy for sale?” “Yes, he is. Would you like to hold him?” “I would.” The salesgirl came from behind the counter …

“No child is born angry, say the experts, but this is hope not fact,” Dr. Daprahana maintained. “Wrath resides in everyone at birth along with emotions like love and shame. Under the right circumstances, these emotion seeds can root in our consciousness and explode into actions, some deadly, some sublime, and some both at the same time.” Having heard metaphysical …

It was snowing lightly that mid February morning as I prepared for my hike up a slippery Greenwich Avenue. It was Sunday, a special Sunday. My eighth grade class was gathering for Mass, followed by a pancake breakfast prepared by our parish priests, Monsignor Brannigan and Father Prizzi. My class had recently achieved statewide recognition for our accomplishments in arithmetic …

An old man, a poet of the generation of Kerouac, Corso and Ginsburg, is at the lectern tonight in the auditorium of a small college nestled in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Although widely published for many years, both in the United States and abroad, he has never done a reading of his work. He attended a reading once, back in …

Sean and Rose met in an online chat room. He proposed after their second in-person date, and she said yes. They honeymooned in Bali, and it was the most romantic setting either one had ever seen. One evening they watched the sunset at Tanah Lot Temple. After dark had fallen, they were entertained by the “Monkey Dance” performance with seventy …

At this hour, we had the hay maze all to ourselves. Guarding the entrance stood a gang of white pumpkins on a bed of scattered straw. Tower rested his foot on the largest one as he pointed to Katie’s milk colored Kentucky Derby hat. “You wanna put that wedding cake in the car?” he asked. “No, watch me beat you …

I was doing my dishes one day and heard a knock on the front door. I leave my door open in the summer and always have a pitcher of lemonade in the fridge. I love the way the lemon wheels float to the top and the glass pitcher gets all frosty. Imagine my surprise when I turned around and saw …

Dear Frank, How are you? I hope the journey was smooth for you. What is life in Okinawa like? The day you left, I thought the clouds were falling on me and the sun had vanished. My lonely self consumed by the weight of emptiness. One time I thought I was going blind from the cascading tears blurring my vision. …

Through a hollow darkness the Cherokee son traveled. He looked up to see a moon riding the skies and stars galloping across the heavens. Carrying the searching song of his soul, he journeyed on until he came to a mountain that he looked through to see another world beckoning. This was the world that held the spirits of all things. …

When Joanne DuMont first opens her eyes in the morning it usually follows an intense night of waitressing. She has already slept late (9:30, or so) and relishes her slow mornings to herself. She’d waitressed all her adult life, raised a son (now grown) by herself, and now enjoys her morning to herself. Her mornings are now free, quiet, calm, …

“I’m in love with that moment when I go to sleep, when my head sinks in the pillow and my body goes deep in my bed.” It’s a moment of giving one’s self up to the world of dreams. What a misty enigmatic magical world in which we may interact with our subconscious mind! It seems that all the thoughts …

I floated on golden cloud from place to place. All I had was my soft brown and white fur, my tiny pink tongue, my piercing blue eyes that melted the hearts of everyone who saw me. Meow! Meeee-ow! There were so many ways to express myself. But no meow could capture the way I felt when they cut me open. …

“My planet sweet on a silver salver,” she said. “What?” he asked. “Dana, that makes no sense, none.” “What doesn’t?” Dana asked. “It’s a song lyric, Echo and the Bunnymen.” “Oh,” he said. “I don’t know them.” “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “No,” he said. “I suppose not.” “Besides, I came out here to have a break, I didn’t want …

Excerpted from the novel Pharoni, by Colin Dodds A tall older woman sidled up next to me and said, mixing business with pleasure? Just being at the party entitled you to an immense benefit of the doubt, which freed people up to say things like that. I looked over my shoulder and smiled at what I saw. She was a …

My ex-wife took this photo. If I seem distracted, it’s because I was. I was just leaving the Museum of My Perpetual Despair. I wore a white shirt and jeans. The bronze-buckled belt is lost to history, as is the single gold earring. I carried a sheaf of papers, though I cannot recall anything about them. Perhaps they concerned my …

Howard watched the plum-colored liquid drip into the bag. Slowly. Slowly. He’d seen hourglasses drain more quickly. At this rate his blood would be obsolete before it even left his body. What was most infuriating about the tedious process of waiting for the bag to fill with his blood was knowing that it would still be several minutes before that …

It was their wedding night and Priya didn’t want to tell her new husband all about it but Bill kept asking where she had learned to walk like that. Finally she told him it was inherited from a previous life, a life she had lived many years ago in India, not far from Bangalore. She had been a cobra kept …

She was an old woman now. The crime her son Aaron committed was on her mind every day. And why shouldn’t it be? He had killed his wife and was serving a forty-year sentence in Chino Men’s Prison just south of Los Angeles. Her husband, God bless him, had left her plenty of money. Sitting at her cluttered dining room …

Valeria sat down in her wooden chair and laid a woolen blanket across her lap to warm her legs. She enjoyed watching from the window of her room how the rain fell passively on the garden that she had planted, with hard work, in her yard for years. Her house and garden were among the most precious things she had …

A random hardworking man punches Friday’s clock, wipes the grime from his brow, walks toward his ’84 Ford Ranger that’s in desperate need of a tune-up. If I choose to rob him for his easily forgeable paycheck and whatever pittance happens to be in his wallet at that moment, would the karmic scales be balanced if I were to donate …

The last day of the Bi-Annual Industrial Fraud Conference had gone as poorly as the first two days. The unseasonably cold weather, the economy, an escalating series of unfortunate events had left Riley Babcock exhausted and defeated. It was his last night in Vegas, for God’s sake, but all he wanted to do was retreat to his room. At least …

She had just clicked off the remote and closed her eyes. “Oh no,” she thought. “The house is settling.” She had lived in her red brick home for nearly nineteen years. She had paid a fortune for termite control, bees entering through the bathroom window, wasps on the back porch, and now there was a new noise. Unrecognizable. Could it …

Seventh grade chemistry class. Kenneth dug deep, like a planter’s hand. He worked a potter’s green thumb. He scratched his thinly haired groin beneath the school desk. Mrs. Garvin, his infatuation, used a walking cane that tapped tapped tapped. Her skirt fluttering in synchronicity. O Mrs. Garvin wielded her cane, O she tapped tapped broken pieces of blackboard chalk, O …

But no one can know where he is if we do not ask. We came into it, blankly, without question and there is no way we would get answers. So, we didn’t ask. The ship came and we boarded on while some showed hesitation and some did not. “What is your plan?” he asked. “To get stinking drunk” I replied. …

When I was seven years old, my father dragged me onto one of those swan pedal boats they used to have at the beach. It was so hot the seatbelt buckle burned my fingers every time I touched it. Staring at the water, I wished I knew how to swim so I could jump right in. While Dad was peddling, …

The first men I fell in love were Robert Kennedy and Jesus Christ. I hope I am not blaspheming if I say that I found a prophet extremely handsome with his auburn hair and Celtic beard. I loved both JFK and his brother, but for me Robert was handsomer. I gazed upon my heroes long hours, until the Virginian (James …

So many evenings, while sitting at his desk, typing, the poor, hungry writer heard a whistle. And it was an exceptionally skilled whistle. The lips captured to a tee the sliding up the scale, then suavely sauntering back down the scale whistle associated with paying a compliment to a hot lady. Put your lips together and blow. Easy, for dreamers. …

Through a hollow darkness, the Cherokee son traveled. He looked up to see a moon riding the skies and stars, galloping across the heavens. Carrying the searching song of his soul, he journeyed until he came to a mountain that he looked through to see another world beckoning him; this was the world that held the spirits of all things. …

He asks me to count to ten. I am lying in a bare and chilly room on a very high and narrow bed, which he helps me to mount with the aid of a few steps. I’m wearing a pair of feather-light slippers. He looks so ridiculous in his green cap, a strange color for such a muscular man who …

Hounded by neighbors and ruthless schoolchildren during the day, their nocturnal, air-rending cries of hunger keep me vigilantly awake. Stoning is the most lenient fate that awaits mums, puppies, or the already lame. My ears have attuned their nerves to catch the slightest bark that has a tinge of dread as it squeals its alarm away. A stray dog has …

It was six o’clock at night. Irene stressed. Slightly disheveled. Dropped ice cubes. Poured whiskey into a glass and rapidly started stirring. Donald would be coming into the house. She’d heard the garage door open and close. “Where’s my drink?” he asked putting down his briefcase. “You know I want it when I get home from work.” “I made it. It’s …

Griffin liked to arrive early enough to cruise by the parking lot until a 15-minutes-only space opened. There, he would sit in the car for half an hour, rearview mirror tilted at the coffee shop. The seat belt could be undone in an instant, but first impressions couldn’t. He’d know her when she arrived, but the women rarely embodied their …

I had a girlfriend who got caught up in a tornado. And I mean up. An actual tornado. It was in Iowa, I think. One of those shitty vowel states. She was babysitting and took the kids to a silo apocalypse shelter that the crazy farmer dad had made and the youngest kid wanted her stuffed giraffe named Ollie or …

He met her funnily enough when he had to fill out his prescription. He was working as a mechanic at the time and he kept getting these headaches, no matter what he did, no matter how many Advil he would take, these headaches would not go away and since he did not have insurance and his work didn’t have medical …

Denzel couldn’t conceive of anything but jail time in his future. Even if his trial was completed before he turned eighteen, he might be sentenced as an adult despite the fact he hadn’t cause Zoe’s death. They had been skimming rocks across Kinzua Lake. Denzel had proposed a fishing date, figuring they’d find a spot along the twenty plus mile …

Allen accidentally brushed his hand against his neck warmer. The oily, stinky hairs protecting that skin wicked away the rain pouring down. The animal that had once possessed that covering had tasted good, like wild fruits and nuts. It had been his fortune to find that large rat stuffing its snout with fallen bounty under a Jaboticaba (Allen had been …

Momma, Ms. Betty, Poppa Turtle, Ervay and I went to Tyler’s so named cause that was the headliner that night. They goan go someplace, do something out this joint, was Ms. Betty’s critique. She aint no Tina mumbled Pops. No, Ms. Peaches smelled like the clean sweat of honest work. She sang with her man, Tyler on bass, a daughter …

Airports and airplanes always give me a sense of new beginnings. The moment an airplane takes off, gravity changes and pseudo force pushes us back to the seat. Then the flight continues. Everything seems like a celebration with happy stewards walking across the plane, asking if everything is okay. Sometimes a hard turbulence may strike and suddenly everyone is praying …

I can’t for the fuck of me understand Aksinya. One moment she’s bald and the next she wears blue hair. One moment she is demure and sad and nothing will cheer her up, than she is the tumult of the falls and starts to fight. That day we sat on a bench in broad daylight on Kozlov St., near the …

I’ve ran in circles to mend the harvest. Grain crops have wilted. God told the sun to bend its head on grain and never let up. The grain condemned me for the drought. I don’t blame God, not directly, but I told grain it ain’t on me. A few farmers in the area said to me that the climate has …

John sat on the back porch of his house in the western suburbs of Sydney, drinking from a can of Fosters and looking at the stars. Nothing out of the ordinary up there tonight, he thought (not that he really knew anything about astronomy, though he did spend a lot of time drinking in his backyard and watching the night …

There was a thick smell of fresh manure while I was prowling around a native farm getting information for this article. The thought of the foul air surrendered to the aural of a mooing cow which drew me into the barn. I edged closer to the animal with its head locked between iron bars and its teats connected to a …

I discovered a little playground. Preschoolers were running around. They were maybe 3, 4 or 5. I’m a white cracker: haggard, bedraggled, red-eyed, neurotic, irritated today due to anxiety—irritated more than usual, and some of it real. I visualized a minor news article: Bum found dead on the street, frothing at the mouth. At least I had I.D., so they …

The sun rose on Mars, and Spektor watched the grainy images sent back by NASA’s rover on his computer screen. The MP3 playing was a European dance beat without any real instruments, produced by a South African DJ who never showed her face. The time was 3:21 in the AM. Evanescence, Spektor’s girlfriend, was out somewhere, either at work or …

with apologies to Jonathan Swift The other day I was talking to a neighbor who said he found a way to help the poor and improve our environment simultaneously. It’s no secret, he said, that we have a dire food shortage among the chronically poor. It’s also no secret, he pointed out, many of our cities are overrun with feral …

“I don’t know what to tell you, Bryan,” Van Harappan said, expressing a minor distaste at having the young man’s name in his mouth. “That’s just business. I don’t judge you for engaging in it. But I might judge you for not having the stomach for it. All I can tell you is to suck it up. And, if you …

Never judge a book by its cover. I learned this from a small incident that would almost disappear into the shadows of history, were it not for the power of memory that can’t help wanting to retrieve it, and others like it, and, too often, does. I was a handsome guitarist in a late-teens, 20’s and 30’s bar called the …

Maxxon Studios decided to make a sequel to Vanishing Point. The original movie was made in 1970 using a white Dodge Challenger, and the star was named Kowalski. Kowalski was a Vietnam veteran. He’s delivering the Challenger from Denver to San Francisco, and a chase starts after he has a run in with the cops in Denver. There’s a black …

Why are we matter and not antimatter, or are we the latter and think that we’re not? Brought into contact the one with the other, the two would annihilate right on the spot. Opposites attract— some do— but in this case, it isn’t true; for in that mirror image clash the counterparts destroy their doppelgangers in a flash and thus …

I’ll take siesta over fiesta. You’re my ballast and I’m your ballista. I concur, confer, and further confirm: We’ve traded demigods for demagogues. In a comedy, you die; in a tragedy, you get hitched. I spill pills on my pilose pillows; I tear my tears and tear through all tiers. We must make the impossible possible, remain sane in an …

One day I sat with Natasha near her house, eating cakes. Her parents hated me. They thought that I was a useless scum. Even her Father, a pathetic drunk, despised me. But Natasha sorta loved me and sometimes brought some food from home. Even booze, on occasion. She was a kind girl. Just the day before we had got shitfaced …

for Dr. David Hillman My best friend wears the head of an ass. It’s not an easy situation, but it’s one we can deal with. The head of the ass gives him access to the super-temporal realm, i.e., makes him a total nutball. He is, without question, great at parties. People are sad here in the developed world these days, …

When Joe told his friend Jocelyn that he was seeing Dr. Dold, she laughed. Joe was affronted. “Is it that funny to consult a shrink, I mean… therapist?” “No. Sorry.” Then an extended after-giggle. “Sorry.” Joe went anyway. His life was so empty of stress he felt abnormal, and could bear it no longer. “My life is empty,” he told …

“That sounds fine. As long as the Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t come back before then.” This was the first response I got from my grandfather, Pawbe, when I told him I wanted to draw. “When does Jesus want to come back?” “We don’t know. No one does. But it’s soon.” I didn’t respond. I just slid down the humorless, black, …

Italy is a complicated country, and the virus multiplies the complications exponentially. The stress builds, and thoughts surface to alleviate the tension. I ordinarily lock my bicycle to a signpost before entering the fruit store. But wearing the surgeon’s mask and gloves makes it too difficult to fish the key out of my front pocket to unlock it upon return, …

The man behind the counter looked me over as I staggered into the shop. “Full up?” he asked. I nodded stiffly. I was afraid to move too fast. The man, George, lifted one hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve come in. But why did you wait till now?” “I—there was just so much to deal with.” I …

Sailing the chill waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the cargo ship MS Harper is the only speck of brightness in the vast moonless night. Floodlights illuminate the shipping containers stacked on top of one another. Some scuffed, some dented, all of them with their rectangular space occupied by a brand-new Korean car. Florescent lights shine through the bridge windows, while …

Attacus atlas. Southeast Asia. Attacus moths are frequently misidentified as birds owing to their large wingspan of up to twelve inches. However, sightings of the moth are uncommon. Celeste inched closer, determined. A moth of seemingly impossible proportions flitted among the trees in the tropical forest of the Malay Archipelago. She had been tracking the Attacus for several hours. The …

Yet as this new-sprung prince of undiscovered sterling qualities made to enter the immense cordon thorn lance-a-lot barricade the thicknightet hedge theurgically parted only to close again after his advance opening into redolent wild roses devoid of their prior barbed prongs. And even these sweetbriars bent aside and gave way until the now-present-prince found himself in my perfumed palace gardens …

“your daddy was a bastard, Lisa, never trust men, they’ll hurt you just like he did. but your mama, your mama will never do you wrong.” —— Dead Mama. 2 YEARS LATER. (camera fades in on a desolate gas station in mesa, arizona. car pulls in and parks, and a tall, busty, blonde-haired woman walks out, and into the gas …

Todd Smith woke to find a raccoon biting his chin. “I was at camp, dreaming that my mom wanted me to shave. Christ, I’ve only got about four hairs.” Aaron Goldberg woke to discover that all his teeth had fallen out. “I’ve had the same dream a hundred times. Out come the teeth. My therapist told me I was worried …

Leslie decided he really was going to kill her. She was resting in the bedroom to some Oprah re-run. So Leslie removed from the inside of a shining, brown leather briefcase containing a number of forms and instruction manuals, a long-handled gun with a muzzle and blew her brains against a wall silently. He went down two flights of stairs …

She had imagined once that love was soft and squishy like carrot cake or banana bread. With Claude, it was at first, if not a little moister than she wanted. But as the initial passion wore off, she found it to be a little more light and flaky– croissants, cherry pinwheels; she found the portions bigger but less filling. Three …

Coming into this place, it was like I was dropped from another planet. Fruit picker at 2 ½ cents a pound of strawberries, bar room musician, block buster scholar with academic title for recommendations needed by anxious friends, dishwasher at $4.60 an hour, resident scholar of the illiterate in the slums. Then I decided to read poems in bars. I …

~1~ You know exactly what it feels like when you really need to pee. And you can’t get to a bathroom fast enough. I have found myself in that situation far too many times. But the time that was perhaps the worst was when I arrived at a crowded party, headed right to the bathroom, and found a line of …

He crossed over the bridge to walk into the underbrush. Grasses and shrubs, small trees and mosses were sitting motionless even as they shone in the rain shadows. The Cherokee son kept his eyes to the ground searching … until he found what he was looking for; a fat log on which to sit. He plopped down on it with …

I was meditating on being grateful for my reliable truck when I transformed into an angry white man directing a fear struck Mexican to pull over. I could see him wondering if his brown ass was gonna be kicked by a Trump supporter. While approaching the construction vehicle, I noticed the load was held by one strap and glanced at …

Making a big entrance, Uncle Tutti arrived late at my high school graduation party, like a Hollywood star. He wore a smart black suit, buttoned near the collar and black and white Domino shoes. “My godson,” said Uncle Tutti, pinching my cheek with the thick fingers of one hand and slyly handing me an envelope with the other. “Now, I’m …

What sparked the Big Bang? Should we give a dang how the experts debate as to what might predate it or seemed to exist? Speaking for myself, I cannot resist a fantasy spree of drifting away in reveries vast about our fabulous, fathomless past. Utterness whereabouts always were there, and singularities melt in thin air, when we consider an alternate …

The leaves were falling. Jim Jefferies drove about town and noticed trees getting thinner and winter drawing near. He thought of the plains Indians living in these parts. How cold they must have been and how cozy in a warm tepee. Population replacement must have been easy. He loved his hometown but times were tough, once again. He was cruising …

Ignoring the sudden, throbbing pain in her hip, Katie limped to the front of the class. “Kids!” She set her cane aside and motioned to get the second graders’ attention. “Look at this.” ​She held up a glass canning jar with a dragonfly in it and listened to their enthusiastic “Ohhs” and “Ahhs.” ​Jeremy, one of her more inquisitive students …

Privy to the indiscretions of the local girls, we gathered outside the general store for our weekly ritual. I supplied the Mary Jane just to keep them talking candidly in my presence. I learned more than any boy could have ever known with the amount of experience I had – which was none. Bernie, we can tell you because you …

“‘Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!’ (Shakespeare, Othello Act 2 Scene 3, Cassio speaking to Iago).” Kevin finished reading aloud from the dog-eared book of quotations on the table in front of him, and took a mouthful from his …

I knew Sam from Jerusalem, way, way back in the day when we were both new immigrants to Israel. In those days, everyone in the neighborhood had keys to each other’s houses. Some of us had phones, some had washing machines, and it was easiest to share these things with our friends by just letting them come and use them …

A friend of mine had once advised me to refrain from making friends with my neighbors. This advice proved to be useful, but had I followed through with it, I would not be writing this. At the time I was naive, and thought nothing of a friendly chat with the neighbor next to whom I had just moved. I lived …

We got this one sayin’ — really a lotta sayins up here, but my personal favorite is: “hell ain’t worth a damn ‘less you know why you’re damned.” I ain’t paraphrasin’ neither. We don’t have no time for paraphrasin’ up here. That’s right, you’ll find out soon, once you too get damned. Hell is actually above all you regular type …

“Those clouds look really cheap,” Ryan Bendix said to me. One of the big stupid white dogs had wandered into the field across the street and we were waiting for it to wander back. Our boss told us to “go get him,” but the field was a swamp that time of year, so Plan A was just standing there and …

“Sometimes Jesus walked around with a big staff, just like me,” Mrs. Day says to herself as she looks at the frayed picture on her kitchen wall just above the little kitchen table. She cut that picture out of a magazine fifty years ago when she subscribed to Life and Look and Colliers magazines. “Jesus doesn’t need that staff,” Mrs. …

He invited me to the swimming pool for a dip. I pondered over my bikini of too many low-cut bits. I could not think of myself at Bishopbriggs in such a strip. The name suggested a stronghold of monks that a monastic vein in my heart had always cherished. I deliberated over the matter with a troubled wit then decided …

My uncle Charlie only ever saw things in black and white. He had never owned a colour TV. He said the colour TV license was far too dear. I didn’t even know anyone still believed in that shit. Was there such a thing as a black and white TV license in this day and age? “Black and white’s better,” he’d …

I had arranged a meeting in the park with the woman who wrote the found poem. When she arrived she was carrying a tattered folding umbrella. She looked at me and said, I think I’ve eaten a whole block of cocaine. Have you ever broken your ankle? She sat on the bench and removed a hairbrush then proceeded to drag …

I was in a considerable state of nervous overload when the Black Rooms made their first appearance in my young life. That life had been one of panic and slip sliding instability. Evictions again and again from a long succession of scabrous hovels the merest step from wretched homelessness. All of them grotesquely filled with gobbling monstrous ghouls. Such places …

Rubber tires don’t stick to asphalt in August as boys stick to bragging while drinking. Longnecks and short stories in a shuttlebus jammed on a Texas highway nowhere near wide enough. “Don’t say anything about what we’re talking about, we’re different. We just needed to get out of high school and grow.” I assure groomsmen and their groom I’m as …

The sun was blazing green hues, the earth was sprouting blood like dust. The wind was icy and heavy- almost suffocating. Sunburnt twisted limbs dug. They fissured the serum of earth with violence and tickled the tarnished soil with their sickles and spades. Each brutal sweat evaporated into miasma. The wailing chill swallowed the filth, the trauma. Violence sniffled into …

An Excerpt of Sleeping Beauty There was kiss me under the Golden Bough mistletoe, yes Virgil says it was gilt wholly golden, so named possibly from the clinquant tint the cut limb acquires when kept to wither glittering through a season. Was not the sun’s firelight, or a modicum thereof, supposed to radiate from this shrub gathered all in all …

Amanda dreams that she is beautiful, with a body without scars and wrinkles, that she is young and that she is free from her illness and her earthly ties. Although we could say that every living being, every creature has its intrinsic beauty and thus that would be an unfair comment. Moreover, age is a relative matter, because nowadays seventy …

Oh yeah. They wanna make ravens out of all of us. Like, how many ravens can a guy see in Miami, Fla.? Don’t not ask me how, but I did see a raven. Kind of a square head, looked downtrodden, dusty, sickened, perhaps because of the heat. I thought about Edgar Allen Poe’s “Nevermore,” and even said it to the …

I never leave the city. In its steel canyons and paved valleys I lose myself. Metal and granite body of the colossal organism pulsates in artificial mechanical rhythms while I tumble through its gridded metropolitan veins. Never do I look at the sky. Nor linger on the fringes. Cubiforms and sectored geometries dissolve into random natural contours here and I …

She sat like a statue on a charpoy, staring vacuously in the space. A plate with lentil curry and bread was lying beside her but she seemed to have no appetite. She was a middle-aged woman with attractive features but a forlorn look on her swarthy face, her hair unkempt and dusty. She has not changed clothes for five days. …

In the evening my phone rang. Nobody had called me for ages. I thought that all the people I ever knew had died already. It was so boring. And suddenly it turned out an old friend remembered me. I have not seen him for a thousand years. Since he had gone into business, we parted ways. Here, all of a …

It is 7:35 in the afternoon and Kris is sitting in the middle of a row of kids at church. She is sweating and her leg is shaking and her heart is beating fast and the back of her eyes hurt. She is the most awake that she has ever been in her entire life. She has a lot of …

The trunk lid was 20 yards away, twisted by the force of the crash into something like a giant piece of bow tie pasta. She lifted the sleeping bag from the trunk. Mine now, she said. Police sirens dopplered. She hid first among plumes of steam, then in the underbrush, until the cops left. Did they not see her or …

BRAAAAPhooooooo! HIT that loud pedal. RATTLE those neighbor’s windows. BRAAAAPhooooooo– BRAAAAPhooooooo– BRAAAAPhooooooo– Roll bar. Got to buy a roll bar for this beast. The class I’m gonna run in requires it. The car goes BRAAAAPhooooooo– Let’s see. A Remington 870 would do the job. That’s a good compact shotgun. Need an Optima Red Top Battery. This big engine takes a …

Hello, everybody! Great to see you. I guess you can tell by looking that I am a geezer, a crank, a codger, an old fart – as well as a wizened wise man in an age that can’t tell wisdom from information. After making that profound remark, I’m going in another direction. I know what information is but don’t have …

I wished I’d never picked up the phone. But obeying drunken friends was a familiar formality so they wouldn’t swing or cry. Listening to inebriated chicks I’d never met turned out to be a different situation altogether. Unfortunately, it was second nature for me to follow instructions. I ended up driving to meet her, that drunken girl in my phone. …

Maria, a forty-year-old divorcée, hoped Frank hadn’t changed his mind. She peered out her living room window. Pedestrians passed, cars eased to the curb, but no sign of Frank. She scooped a handful of jellybeans from the candy dish and popped them into her mouth. She picked at her teeth with a glossy red fingernail. Finally, Frank pulled up front …

CARMODY I have been looking all my life for someone who would tip me up straight and point me in the right direction. BLIGHT “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” ••••••• When the police arrived, the old woman was still in a state of confusion, having stumbled over the row of decorative bricks by the bay window and rolled …

I hung up the phone, mentally exhausted from the battle that had just ensued. I had just survived something worse than negotiating with a used car salesman. Talking to my cable TV provider. After receiving the flyer advertising the new-to-me feature of On Demand, touting thousands of movies and channels at no extra cost, my interest was piqued. Weary of …

I “read” the other abductees for you. What more do you want? “Wake up! I paid millions for you. There’s no time for sleep.” There’s no mutuality to our “contract.” “Drat! Sebastian, get me the longer pole. This one doesn’t reach.” “He’s already pretty bruised up, Boss.” “Shut up or I’ll thrash you, instead.” “I’m getting the broomstick.” And I’m …

Having tied his Capezio shoes, Vito brushes his white slacks and gets up from the chair. He walks over to the mirror in the living room to brush his black hair — again. He tilts his head to one side, looks at himself from the corner of his eye and runs the brush across his coal black mass of hair. …

Television imagination remains untwisted in summer while our dad says, “Stay with grandmother. It’s going to be hot again, way into the hundreds, and while she’s not quite there yet please just stay home.” As Dad shut the door, fervid outside air rushes into the house where hundreds of colorful candle statues with slick, wet-looking perfume bodies wait for fire …

Billy knew he had to break it off when they entered the nature center and her face didn’t light up. Although, really, he should’ve known from the damn start. Greta was nothing like the local girls he went with. Her fingernails were painted a rich-girl red. Her clothes were sleek as machetes. Billy stared into a woodsy aquarium. The bigger …

For years Rocky’s Diner had always done a great business for breakfast and lunch but his dinner business had fallen off recently as folks moved to the suburbs, got married, died or simply went elsewhere to eat. He thought about closing early but he had a small cadre of elderly men, many of whom had been his customers for two …

If ten years of staring up through the atmosphere had taught Quince Skine anything, it was that a truly cloudless sky was a miracle. His nights were all the same; they began with him shoving a ragged and reddened eye into the end of a long, rectangular device. He scanned the cosmos with reckless abandon, dreading the eventual moment when …

Uncle Nat was definitely my favorite uncle. He was my mother’s younger brother and lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania with his wife, Sadie, and their two daughters, Lillian and Dorothy. Dorothy, the younger girl was just one year my junior and we were great friends for years. Uncle Nat, born Hershel Newtah Jochnewitz, Americanized his name to Nathan Young while still …

Chet sat on the edge of the courthouse lawn. He was a thin black man. He wore khaki slacks and a green t-shirt and had a fedora hat on his head. It had cooled off a little now that the sun was going down, but it was still hot. Chet took a drink from a half pint bottle of Jim …

Freddie and Fern were an old couple, a very old couple if truth be told, but on the matter of age, the truth seldom surfaced. Their kids were grown and gone and had families of their own. All of them lived in different cities and two of them had even asked their parents to sell the house and buy a …

(Featuring Polly & Molly) Other Characters: Chef Jean-Paul The Ice Man Fifi the Cute French Waitress Harry & Larry Freezer Boy Bob Random Marcy Marcy (does not appear) Cyclops Various narrators & monkeys, who can be played by actors or cardboard cut outs as the budget allows, except where indicated Location: The Walk-in Freezer at the Ritz Carleton, Paris Time: …

OK, I’m sitting in a restaurant at Trudeau Airport, Dorval (My ignorance abated by the patronizing smile of the bus driver who informed me that Dorval was Trudeau—how am I to know these things?). An enormous piece of chocolate cake, on a large white plate, criss-crossed with drizzles of chocolate syrup, is before me. The syrup drizzles are surely arranged …

It’s Christmas Eve and Paddy Kelly is on his way home from work at the Post Office. He stops at Rosen’s Deli and orders a brisket of beef sandwich on pumpernickel rye with a smear of horseradish and a new kosher pickle on the side. Ever since he came from Ireland to Chicago, Paddy has preferred the new kosher pickle …

My Mom was the first candidate to be subjected to those medicines. It wasn’t voluntary. We had no choice. I was tied to my imaginary chair, hands tied behind my back. Can’t I stop them? As a child, Mom had protected me from any harm, when a neighbor boy had bitten my arm, she told me I didn’t deserve this …

He had been deeply in love, but love had stretched and thinned and wandered in three years. She wasn’t as into him, either. And that gave him panic attacks as he questioned his mortality, his relevance. Three years ago she climbed on him in the back of a taxi heading home. With real animal aggression, she didn’t give him a …

The frat near Whittier decided to have a clown party. It was Good Friday and seemed like the thing to do. Nine teenagers from the party decided to cram into a top-down convertible and drive home. It’s what clowns do. Pile into a car. But clowns usually don’t do that drunk on a major California highway. The car hit a …

I drove the clown car (used to, anyway) before I quit the shows. To be clear, I ain’t talkin’ about ass clown drivin’… racing like these young no class fools do. No. What I say is that KiKi LeBlanc worked the circus. Never mind white face, never mind Bull Clown. My job was take the falls, act the dope, finish …

I loved my cock. El Pollo Diablo. He was a quiet cock most of the time. None of the hens could make him screech. Proud and strong, he’d swagger ’round that barnyard, and if any of the gals got in his way, he’d peck ’em to death. With or without his silver spurs, that ol’ blood lust would kick in …

Under one of the oaks of the dense hammock, Bryan poured the last of the coffee from the thermos into the stainless mug. It would have been good on ice, but it was strong coffee, and it would do and hold him over until they got to camp. The tiny myrtle warblers traded calls and flickered through the oak’s shadows. …

Mary worked as a coiffeuse and drank rather heavily. She even sold the toilet bowl in the apartment. Then she met a businessman named Volodya, fell in love with him, quit drinking and married. With Volodya’s help, Mary bought a bistro, where in the old days there got together all sorts of local drinking profligates. She herself often dropped in …

“Shit.” The words escape my mouth as the headlights roar towards me. My seat belt tenses across my chest, and my car lunges into fast turning circles. The lights outside are blurry against my window, like someone smeared soapy watercolors across them. The air inside my car stands still. I relax against the headrest and feel the figure eights deep …

Mark your calendar. This September 15th, the Worldwide Christian Family Missions Network presents Antichrist: The Reality Show. Six contestants will compete over six weeks and complete six projects. They’ll use every underhanded, dastardly, sneaky trick in the book (not the Good Book, of course) to succeed. We all know that the world is going to hell, that the Apocalypse is …

I think the worst part of this whole story is how few details I remember about the guy. I don’t remember his name, but he worked as a bartender where I was a waitress. He had a real job, too, somewhere in an office. I remember that part because one year I needed my tax return postmarked on the 15th …

Jack, seventeen and homeless, still wearing scars across his cheeks from the beatings his stepfather gave him a year ago, tramped along the underground carriages begging for money every day, thankful for the generosity of the odd schoolboy or septuagenarian who handed him some change. Not that it amounted to anything, but being treated like a human, knowing someone cared, …

The funeral was big. Cooder sat at the back. He was dressed in a black suit. He hadn’t shaved. He fiddled with a puzzle. He twisted it left. He twisted it right. He could not solve it. He’d probably never solve it. The person next to him told him to shush. Cooder slouched into his chair and scowled. He slouched …

My life changed when I met a woman. I suppose that’s a cliché you’ve heard before. Stick with me here, don’t get cynical. The restaurant was crowded on that autumn day, and with no chair nearby, the young lady asked if she could sit across from me. I sat alone at a small table with one other chair, reading Shakespeare’s …

I thought the worst part of going to work for the Coroner’s office would be the emulsified bodies, the stink of rot hanging in my clothes, an air of finality about my demeanor, decay of the soul and spirit, moral jaundice, an urge to buy new shoes every other week, and wondering at the end of each shift what the …

My wife and I are new residents of an over 55 community on the edge of the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey and are still finding our way and learning the rules, regulations, and customs of our neighborhood. We feel as though we are living “off the grid” as a simple trip to a grocery store, mall, or restaurant …

Fermentation tanks reflect last call exit lights. Finishing beers, the tenth or fifteen, as taproom lights fill in our accidental drunken Thursday. We’re the only two drinkers at midnight other than the bartender who drank to not be our third wheel. We walk and all that watches is the moon, a misshapen fish eye from a broken body of water. …

Two drunken men in their late twenties stumble down the steps of a brick house into the street. They ask what the hell I am doing walking the streets of Hyde Park at three AM. “You looking for a place to rob?” the taller one pushes. I could shoot back the same line but I am prepared and tell them …

It happened after a night of drink and drugs, licking, sticking, sucking and fucking her way into friendship at a party. Jenny was speeding the streets trying to make it home before her father found her gone. He was always up with the first chirp of an early bird, and her time was quickly dwindling, as the fading moon foreshadowed …

You know what? What? I hate to say, but I have given it a lot of thought. The truth is, well, I don’t love you anymore. What?  Now don’t be silly. We’ve been married 15 years. I’m afraid it’s true. Oh, come on. What’s the matter? What is bothering you? Nothing is bothering me. I feel much better opening up …

Cubie sat at his COSTCO-purchased, black leather folding card table. He began pondering the possibilities of another short work. He was lucky because he sold a crime novel of 38 chapters, and the sale brought him some free time for writing. I’m playing with the devil, though, and soon my luck will run out. The devil of luck with the …

Featureless, he sat before the therapist. Blank faced, serene, just a slit of a mouth in his smooth round face to go on, to speak, to answer; no eyes, no nose, nothing. So how do you feel, asked the therapist. How do you feel today? What brings you here? The mouth moved in the smooth peach fuzzed face making words. …

Word spread fast at the poker club where the retired men of the community meet to play almost every day but not on Sunday out of respect for those who went to church. But this is Saturday and the word is out that Cussin’ Paul, in his 80s now, a charter member, wouldn’t be coming to play anymore. The word …

Damien is at the main tranquerawith a dozen armed black-suited people behind him,Goneril is standing beside himholding a newspaper above her headto block the sun from her face.Three grey-suited men with legal pads in their handsstand to her right. Damien is Teresa and Obligation’s son. Goneril is his wife. Obligation bought this ranch. Obligation died of a heart attack while …

Smoothly, it floated, sashaying down the slope. It twirled around, nudging its posterior, dancing to the tune of pitter-patter. Oh! It had the moves! The notes were clear. It’s movement swift. It was a sight to see the graceful moves. Captivated, they looked at it shimming its way through. As the droplets became heavy with moisture, it bobbed as it …

Dark matter seems to be what isn’t there to be seen in between what we see. They dub it dark since you cannot detect it, nor can they inspect it with telescopy. Yet, while it can’t be descried, it cannot be denied for equations that irk to work. Should dark matter matter, would dark matter matter a titter or twitter, …

One day when I was sitting in the teacher’s room a man walked in and sat next to me. “Remember?” He asked. His face looked familiar but I wasn’t able to remember where I had seen him. I was putting pressure on my mind when he jumped to his feet, frowned, and got very angry. “As now that you’re a …

Harry McNabb was in a pickle. He had a poem due the next day for a project he had been roped into a month ago and he had not written anything. Deciding to take a stab at it around 2 PM, Harry tried typing the poem on his laptop. He would write one line and then delete it, write another …

Dear Mother, You promised that you would never leave me, and you promised that you would always love me by speaking those three words, “ I love you,” and you promised that you would give me the sugar water whenever I felt the anxiety, and you promised to teach me how to count in Japanese, and you promised that you …

“You dream of me less these days,” my father says. Even in my dream, I feel guilty, like I did when he was alive. He would say, “You don’t call no more?” even when we’d talked earlier that week. I try to hide my shame, but he can see through it. I am dreaming. My mind is wide open. “I …

“Is this my birthday present,” Emily spat out. She tossed the lipstick on the kitchen table and watched it roll up against the scarf she was knitting. “You’re a fool, don’t you know makeup selection is woman’s work. For the love of God, you’re my husband, not a close girlfriend.” I stared at her red cheeks and narrow eyes. She …

I didn’t like my Fiat. It had become too old. So, I pressed the delete button on it and it was gone. Later that day I saw an advertisement in a newspaper. A girl who was pissed-off with her boyfriend had asked only a dollar in exchange for her new Toyota that she got as a gift from him. But …

The way I see it, Diane, you know, I did her a favor, the way things were going I hate to say it, but I would have needed to kill her, reporters flying in from New York and Los Angeles to interview her and write her up in magazines, she got her colored picture in Gentlemen’s Quarterly, couples we knew …

In the early bright of this damned yet blessed universe, the sweet taste of white madness numbs my tongue and cigarette smoke inhaled fills my lungs. At the foot of the bed, that chick’s panties lay over my feet, while sheets are leaking off the bed all over the floor. It goes that way, doesn’t it? We slept with an …

The best result of hearing a police siren when you are in jail is that you know they aren’t after you. Of course then you must deal with the reality that your ass is incarcerated. Los Robles prison near Punteranes, Costa Rica. I’ve resided in gray bar hotels in a few states back in the U.S. and had the hospitality …

There was a long stopover from the American Airlines flight from Seattle to Cleveland. She wore a loose fitting dress with tiny birds seeming to fly off into the distance. Lucy disembarked with old carryon baggage coming apart at the seams. She made sure her name was visible on the small plastic card as she lugged it to the nearest …

Dr. Chapman had been valedictorian of his class in high school and college but had finished second in his class in medical school, something that still bothered him after 30 years of successful practice in a small city. Many patients traveled from all over the state to see him. Over the years, he had hired a number of practical nurses …

Elevator got stuck. It jam jam, man. No go. Like a can o’ spinach with no Popeye, no extra virgin Olive Oil no ga-ga-ga-ga and no two men vying for the rape of that extra virgin. No crime so long as she’s ripe, man. I crawl down its hole. Like peace. Without the prosperity. Too much dust. I ain’t no …

“Dream until your dreams come true.” — Aerosmith Who minds making love to a beautiful woman? B5 was a man like any other, and making love to a lady who had powers was indeed special. But it was late at night when he dreamt of his soul mate and his reason for being. He fought this before, when to him …

There was a man in the kingdom of Chaos. His name was Melodious Music. He was all contrasted by the warring elements of the kingdom, by their uproars, their thundering beats and plays. He was silent, all pervading among the syllables of coarse voices, hence being-less the passers-by believed him to be. For decades there came no Columbus. And one …

The train rocked her to sleep, though she drifted in and out of consciousness. Her eyes popped open every five-ten minutes with each jerk of the train. Her mind half-registered the beggars, the vendors, the passengers, her father next to her… Suddenly, she was naked. She was standing in the middle of the field, one very much like her grandmother’s …

Off like a shot, the years just drifted away for two young men. John and Nick grew up together on Harrison Avenue. Their fathers worked at blue collar jobs and the mothers stayed at home. The moms didn’t all bake cookies but they were there to put band-aids on the scrapes and cuts and cooled the bruises with ice cubes …

In an apartment near New York’s Central Park, Carl Durkin sits in his study, oblivious to the street below. At first sight, he has a tanned, healthy complexion. Up close, his skin is damaged, pockmarked. Despite the portentous financial news scrolling across his TV, he is relaxed. During a lull in the broadcast, he is joined by a visitor. Someone …

The marriage was over. Pete realized the damage was irreparable when Julie, in a manic episode, disappeared without warning and returned three days later with a twelve-hundred-dollar puppy she morbidly named Kitty Genovese. Having been replaced emotionally and physically, Pete took over the room of his twelve-year-old son Elliott, who was then expatriated to the couch. Three days later a …

Soon after it happened, police cars swarmed in, followed by a fire truck and an ambulance. She watched them all evening from her second floor window that looked out over the parking lot, red and blue and green lights swirling through the darkness like kaleidoscopic searchlights. Around midnight, upset and nervous, she went to bed, wondering if she should check …

I’d been walking around the east side in circles. I felt sluggish and in pain. I had to go somewhere. I had to eat. Like mother says, “a hungry man is an angry man.” I decided I would stop off at Piano’s for their happy hour lunch special. Burger and a salad for five bucks. Can’t beat it. Where was …

Ralph got the phone call around 3:00 pm. The sun was at that place in the sky where it always seemed to hit his eyes the hardest. He had gone inside to take the call, a welcome relief from the afternoon heat. The relief didn’t last long. The voice was dripping with prepackaged compassion, and the official tone made the …

I am not a morning person. That being said, most weekdays I am up at five o’clock to make Alex breakfast. Somehow, the eggs are not broken, the scramble is light and fluffy, the bread is perfectly toasted, the myriad of pills Alex takes are all laid out in the right dosage. I lay the food and accouterments on the …

“His was the light of the world, a lit match or the whole city, burning.” — Robert Creeley My old friend visited Las Vegas with his Katrina rescue shepherd, stayed at a nostalgic Motel 8 on the main drag, urine and stale disinfectants warded off most demonic spirit possessions in the late 1970s. Rescued from nowhere, its neon sign stared off …

“Nine, one, one. What is your emergency?” asked the Dispatcher at 6:03 in the evening in the County San Diego Operation Center. “My daughter is being abused by her father,” yelled a woman. “What’s your name?” “Susan Johnson.” “Are you a witness to the incident?” “No. A neighbor heard my daughter’s screams and called me.” “Is this the first time …

He was standing off to the side of the city Greenway looking at the sky when he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Hey, what are you doing?” Emil turned. It was a policeman on bicycle patrol. “I’m just looking at the clouds, officer,” he said, politely. “That one over there reminds me of a bunny rabbit.” Unimpressed, the cop …

“Out there it’s bloody, fucking chaos, mate” He spun on his left leg. The apron settled in front of him, he began shaking the spatula at the younger and then turned back toward the stove. “In here, you think about it, and the whole fucking thing seems simple enough, yeah?” He pressed down into the skillet and something seemed to …

The children’s screams were completely deafening and were centered within the plastic ball pit of Buck N. Ear’s Pizza Joy Palace. Every single tot ran to the sanctuaries of skirts and mom jeans, their heads being massaged by manicured hands. Cory was the assistant manager on duty for the night, perplexed but determined to define the cause of this strange …

The kitchen floor was still damp but she squatted, still trembling from the shock of the untoward incident. It was purely accidental and she had no regrets. It was preordained that way. He was incorrigibly testy, always chastising her for being “childless.” His propensity to criticize had corroded their relationship. After giving vent to his anger and frustration upon her, …

I clean psych wards. That’s my job.  Once a week, I depill. For four separate wards in the county. I go from room to room and look for pills. They’re everywhere. The patients hide them in plants, behind the toilet, under the toilet cover, in gum stuck under the toilet rim, in every single crevice of their mattress. I’ve shaken …

Some bitches don’t know when to quit. Or maybe most bitches. Was there ever a bitch that wasn’t a bitch? Somebody oughta research it. Cassie, the biggest bitch of all, is still here in his trailer still screaming some stupid shit about some stupid shit. Seriously what he’d really like to do is he would like to clobber her with …

Justin enjoyed his daily walks. A lot of people jogged or ran for exercise, but for him, a long walk was not only good for his health, but also relaxing. He could look around at the world he lived in and get a feel for what was going on in it. An unhurried look at his surroundings. His walks also …

After undergoing a series of tribulations, I promised myself a good start but calamities, the outcome of sheer coincidences, befell me as soon as I had announced my resolve to purge my life of the defeatist stance (which some would call the Fate Syndrome). I pondered over some of the coincidences that derailed my life, whose presence even in fiction …

Millie and I bunkered down against the cold months in Rappahannock County by sitting near the fireplace and reading books aloud to one another while watching old black and white films. I had never felt peace like that before or since. I grew up in a household with an abusive father and an overbearing mother. My sisters were loud and …

“I think you like it rough.” Her eyes stared at the detective blankly. “Excuse me?” “And I think…” he sat back in his chair and clasped his hands over his belted khakis, “you didn’t want your parents to find out that you had sex with a black guy. You’re embarrassed, so you said it’s rape. Am I right?” His gold …

A fierce downpour pounded the pavement outside Birmingham International Airport and lashed against my windscreen. The rear lights of the car in front lit up as a cloud of exhaust fumes gusted into the night air. Through the dissipating smoke I saw her walking towards me, dressed in a red coat and woollen hat. She placed a case on the …

Excerpts from Sleeping Beauty The princess speared her palm on the spindle cusp of the spinning spinning wheel and fell down senseless in a death-like swoon. The old crone started in alarm and tried to undo the damage the spindle prick had done but all her qualms cries pat-a-caking rock-a-bye-babying rub-a-dub-dubbing Mother Goosing ring-around-a-roseying and hey-diddle-diddling failed to arouse the …

That could have been me getting nearly killed that day as I sat on the schoolyard steps getting high with Ferrone. But it wasn’t my turn, yet. Only a few weeks earlier I had bought a ten dollar bag of weed on credit from Fat Andy. Fat Andy was a new dealer in Astoria Park. Being a little taller than …

We’d been dating for about a month when Lorrie got a bull snake as a pet and brought it over to my apartment. “Here,” she said, pushing the writhing reptile toward me. “Her name is Julie. Want to hold her?” No. Not on your life. But I liked Lorrie a lot and wanted to make a good impression, so I …

I play Santa the year after Dad leaves. I’m fifteen. Older sister Nancy and Mother insist. I try to make his suit fit. It’s too wide, lanky body invading another man’s space. Spaces rife with mystery and Dad’s inner thoughts, concealed. I can’t even do Dad’s booming voice. I think of the act of leaving, taking furniture, leaving rooms and …

They were a cute couple, those lovebirds. Sporting deep blue feathers and black heads; they were almost identical looking, except that the male was a bit plumper. They were known collectively as the Nummers. We never even bothered to assign them individual names. Sitting together side-by-side on their perch with their little birdie torsos touching is how they spent their …

Round 1: In every profession there are a few who choose to rise above the commonplace. Fighter 1: Undamaged. Fighter 2: Undamaged. Round 2: Along the path, each in his own way must, of necessity, exhibit judgment, accept the burden of responsibility, and with diligence fulfill his vital role. Fighter 1: Undamaged. Fighter 2: Cut ear. Round 3: Your visit …

Sometimes it gets into my dreams. English/Italian words, one language turning into see jack fuck you geloso cagna asshole và a farti fottere! run. Someone’s hammering nails, soda bottles are falling, marbles are rolling on the floor. Then I wake and I know just what it is. They’re fighting again. Mommy and Daddy screaming around the house, doors slamming, Daddy …

Can’t believe I’m not here anymore! Look, my son is looking up at me. He’s waving to the ceiling! He’s waving to me! He’s thinking, might he cut off a lock of my hair? For future cloning? He’s thinking…What!? Too much hassle! Won’t be around to see me cloned anyway! Son, are you sure bong hits are appropriate now? Gee, …

twenty-four hours eggs and grits and hot coffee small shared silences Too old for milk and sugar, I was 12 when I drank my first cup of black coffee. We were at the diner where Old 54 runs into Trinity Mills. No sign, no name, just the diner where Dad and I always ate breakfast before heading to the lake. …

It was a bright and sunny Saturday morning when Ray Dan looked out his bedroom window. He grabbed his cell and tapped Joe Willy’s name. “Ray Dan, what’s up?” “Well, it’s a beautiful morning in Middle Georgia, full of promise and adventure.” “You sound pretty sober for this time of Saturday, Ray Dan. Everything all good?” “What? I can’t give …

Wes Coleman had been ducking my phone calls ever since his wife and kids left town. Everyone knew he and Carin were having problems, but when a week passed and she didn’t come home, the gossip started to spin out of control. Rumor had it, one of them was having an affair. Wes had started drinking again and was in …

Tony was trying his thirteenth draft on this piece, 1234 words, into the top of the fifth double spaced page. It was a true story in Tony’s own life about how he almost got screwed, due to the follies and games that men play, out of a musical gig. The musical gigs were important to Tony as a livelihood and …

“The initial word of her pregnancy came in a flurry on Monday from St. James’s Palace,” said the NBC news anchor Natalie Morales as she stood in the winter sunshine outside the King Edward VII’s Hospital in London. Susie turned off the TV and dropped the remote on the coffee table in front of her chair. She felt no ill …

Fly high, little one. Let your beautiful wings spread. You’ve learned much, now, and far more to see still. Travel onward, now, across this peculiar world. Mature, experience, and feel. You’ve come far. All the trials of your life you’ve surpassed; all the pains you bore them well. Carry on now, little one, and fly high. Soar across this beautiful …

Outside, the chair was right in front of the building, and they were drinking rotgut wine. I noticed two Latinos and a West Indian with one of those high caps with yellow, green and red swirls. One of the Latinos wore a waist length, brown army jacket. The third guy was in a big, overstuffed armchair, springs splitting through. He …

Ever since I was a zygote, my father told me that Santa wasn’t real. I’d unwrap my presents on Christmas and afterwards he’d show me all of the receipts and tell me that they didn’t come from the North Pole but from KMart. He’d tell me it would be physically impossible to live on the North Pole unless you’re a …

The letter said this project could change your life, so he sat in his University of Arizona-Herpetology Dept. office waiting for this Dr. Wang to appear before the United Nations. They were showing the general assembly on the cable news station, which was full to capacity, with folks standing on the sides. Protocol and safety were at their usual high …

“They tell me I shot myself in the chin, shot somebody else, too, but I don’t think that’s right. What happened was I fell off a fruit wagon.” That’s Dr. Wagner. He’s a pharmacist, had his own small town pharmacy out in the Valley for years, seemed fine, until this happened. I’m his occupational therapist. It’s my job to determine …

I watch the tide of darkness seep in through the periwinkle curtain against the pane of my bedroom window. The birds have stopped chirping. There is no sound except the occasional vehicles that honks on the stray dogs. Nothing has changed. Only that I have retired and my arthritic limbs impede my movement. I wait for my wife in the …

The day of the fire, Jasper called some guy a douchebag in the drive thru right before dumping a tray of milkshakes in the backseat of said douchebag’s Camaro. Mr. Bowdon had a conniption. His face turned red and that one vein in his forehead started bulging and throbbing like it was about to explode. He screamed, That’s the last …

The two sat in an empty plain windowless room with one door, at a thin legged wooden table, on folding metal chairs. They’d been playing cards. You know I want to hear it, said the larger, heavily bearded man. What? said the skinny bald one. That you’re my friend. I want to hear you say that you’re my friend. The …

Sunday and snow. A promise made— a promise kept. Laden with oranges, apples, chips, crackers graham, muenster, and wine to placate my misgivings, a thermos of cold water, mittens, blankets, and four rain-booted children bundled for snowball battles, quivered with impatience— up Angeles Crest we plunged. Destination— snow— 7000 feet. Carsick children— and me. Still no snow. Destination— Big Pine. …

Or rather, I suppose I shall tell you now. You see, Bent was part of a British expedition expect’d to go around the horn of Africa, but three weeks after sailing out of Tenerife, the crew discover’d that a strange kind of mold was growing inside a majority of their water barrels, making the water undrinkable. They had to make …

A strange organization little studied and rarely reported on in the media has members worldwide and is often referred to as Klu Klux Condom. Men covered in leaves and beating drums will set fire on lawns large phallic symbols covered with condoms. The hatred of such a small and soft item that prevents unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases is …

My oh so bloomy garden auteurist domain, where savored I wholesale poetic license, was far more fantastic than the famed hanging wonder of the world terraced in antiquity for a melancholy missus by her kingly spouse. Still and all I wanted the whole blooming world as my garden my luring organa garden my fata morgana garden brimming in the brightest …

It used to be an abandoned storefront, squeezed between a blanched pancake house and a barrel-shaped drive-thru espresso bar. Workers cleaned up the place, painting it white with a new marquee before long-haulers arrived with boxes and palettes. We expected stuff that no one wanted. The malls of America were dying. We awoke to a snow machine, brilliant crystals of …

Geez Louise, I know what’s wrong with me. Even so, there are times when you must talk to something called a psychologist — in my case, for a lawsuit. (You know what they say about female litigants: nutty, slutty, or crooked.) And here I am sitting across from a woman who is probably crazier than I am. She’s scared of …

The call I had been expecting came through. I was laying on my bed thinking about screwdrivers, thinking about how I’d love to unscrew my jaw and let the muscles just hang there like David Foster Wallace. I answered. “Hey, what’s up, Ashton Kutcher,” He said. “What’s up, Mama’s Boy Otis,” I said. “What you doin’?” he said. “Just, you …

Long ago I had the bittersweet pleasure of briefly sharing my domicile with an unforgettable being. I had cohabited with cats all my life, yet I never would have envisioned myself the owner of a goat. The word owner doesn’t exactly apply. Not regarding these recalcitrant ruminants. Nor perhaps is it valid for any living creature, unruly or otherwise. Whatever …

When word from our platoon commander came at 1800 hours saying that orders from Regiment was that we were to be heading out on patrol at 2000 hours, in full battle rattle, none of us were surprised. The Corps didn’t give a squat what day it was. Why would Christmas Eve be any different than Labor Day, Veterans Day, or …

After racing stop signs jutting from small town Texas school buses dull in pre-dawn’s sunray deprivation, I park where we used to play. Tossing basketballs into a net without a backboard, occasionally one would volley next door where my friend’s dying heart was pushed by an electric wheelchair and a young shaking hand. A teenage boy dying from ataxia, the …

She liked to let the bird out. She liked to let her out and watch it fly free from room to room of the house, from windowsill to windowsill. She liked the flurry of the wings and the mild brush of air that wafted over her when the bird flew by. Nothing should be caged up all its life, she …

They came for me in the morning, so I’m told. I had just gotten off the phone and fallen asleep. “Something something mortgages from First Bank National,” they said. I couldn’t understand them. “Your boss something something.” “Is that so?” I asked. ••• In first grade, I took spelling tests. My mom would make me spell out words for practice. …

A slight chill wakes me from the deep, hard sleep; the cracked window, which has never been fully closed since May, directs a breeze into my nostrils. The air is salted from the nearby ocean, accented with the smell of a dying onion patch across the street. The cold makes me jump to immediately. Flipping the baseboards on with my …

Once, not terribly long ago, there lived a green witch. It might be assumed that she dwelled in a ramshackle hut, yet she lived in a tiny house designed by the famous draughtman, Donald Alaska. Donald’s creation had two lofts, a woodburning stove, a deck, and a large kitchen sink. Additionally, his architecture featured a cat door, staircase storage, and …

It was one of those lazy November days, the sky was a blah grey, with an impenetrable fuzzy blanket across the sky. I pulled into the driveway of my condo, just in time to find something to eat and watch the PBS Evening News. My late husband inculcated the importance of this in me, and it was now my duty …

The dining hall at Cape Rush College, panopticon, explosive diarrhea universal. Chaz sat down to dinner at the table with Jase Hantman and the friends they had in common. And Chaz Braylock had no friends at the table, and that’s what made this unusual. The table, in the dining hall at Cape Rush College, and the dining hall was a …

The first time I’d dropped acid, I was nineteen and living in Seattle. A guy I worked with at a coffee shop in the basement of the Elliot Bay bookstore said he had a connection. After work we drove out of the city, into the hills, where his guy lived. The exchange was quick but eventful. The old hippie lived …

I remember my mother had built a small terrace garden on the roof. I was around fourteen years old then and I helped my mother in her endeavors. She had built a room size steel cage with whatever money she had saved for years. It was impossible for her to do gardening on the roof without any guard as mischievous …

Chevy stepside rust fades when Texas horizons distort from blue to grey, promising only the crawl of darkness. Stark against crepuscular atmosphere slants a white house filthy from foundation to deteriorated shingles. The frame sags into dry Texas soil. Ancient worms and creation’s bones partially devour what’s inside, memories of no one who returns here, hands in pockets hoping to …

My urologist recently asked me, “John do you know where you are going and have you found the right path to clarity of expression and urination?” As I looked at him with a quizzical expression, he directed his nurse to schedule some tests for me at Community Hospital. I thought I was feeling fine, but I guess my doctor wants …

I was a high school teacher before they came. I’m not sure what I am now. They said they chose me because they needed cases to test. To make sure their experiments worked. Now I feel more like a Wax Museum custodian than anything else. What I most recall is that it was a very regular night. Even the light …

Hendrik Mogul lives in a box and is happy as is. Natural, box-making materials are his horizon. The four corners give Hendrik direction and order. Choices. Send a toe into the west corner, thinks Hendrik, and he has new ease. The smells of Hendrik and of his box are the smells of home. As Hendrik hums, a lilting rhythm resounds …

Harvest Road took women and no one was bothered. From God’s eye and Internet maps it was easy to discover the street but miss sidewalk cracks where dark things with wet skin made night sounds, piles of departed and disfigured pets found under lost animal posters, and ghostly annual October Klansmen hanging in mesquite trees. Karen absorbed all this on …

My first graders bring in something they like from the outside world to share for Show and Tell every Tuesday morning. Martin Taccone does his presentation last. He slowly walks up to the head of the class carrying a heavy satchel that looks like it has a bowling ball in it. He carefully takes out something wrapped in a blanket. …

Coyote sings us into presence and then laughs his ass off. Sings us into the soul of winter, into resistance, into euphoria. He knows he’s just a moon-illuminated rumor, dog with no name, knows he’s as much a mnemonic device as peyote is a serial killer. Tufts of stubborn snow feathered against the old walls may last, surviving in shadow, …

The cherry cocktail sticks jumped on the neon sign outside the 114 Lounge. Inside, the singer was singing of these cherry cocktail sticks as part of a tune he had written: The neon cocktail lights a dancin’ invitations so bright… The place, the 114 Lounge, was located at 114 Coney Island Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Hence its unostentatious namesake. The …

The jukebox dared to play New Moon. “Charlie, who put this on?” “Weren’t me, it’s one of those tossers over there,” shrugged Charlie. Tony cast a fury glance at Soulboy, Dollop, who wore his muscles under his belly and Library Lad. “They come in our pub and stick their crap on, it ain’t right is it, Sid?” Sid followed Tony’s …

Wash away an obliterated heart. Leave it alone to beat its last thump. Yet, the heart wishes to be seen, understood, accepted, loved. But loved, it never was. Ever a dream and ever a thought, and still this heart strives for it. This youthful heart stuck inside me… Wash it away. Drown it. Disintegrate all the memories. Wash away the …

The Kafka brothers, tiny men with thin moustaches and matching scars across left cheeks, hardly ever speak to one another and forget the other exists, even though they live in the same house. Now in the bestial winter, they have not spoken in over a month nor have they seen the others’ dark brown eyes. The house is not a …

My mom had called me earlier that day to let me know that my brother Randy had called her to let her know that he was in jail down in Texas. She also told me that dad was not going to bail him out. It seemed that both him and his friend Red had been charged with possession of marijuana. …

I know this older lady who left her soul in every barstool across the city. She appeared to be this beautiful shade of lost with just a hint of recognition. Her eyes told this alluring story that I was interested in finding out, and I eventually did. The night I met her she told me she dreamt of being a …

Henry and Wendy Throckmorton had been married a week when Henry took Wendy to his garret 100 miles south of their estate in posh Kenilworth, a suburb of Chicago. Wendy thought she was going on a delayed honeymoon. Henry had never told her that he was a painter by avocation. She knew only that he was a successful patent attorney …

He awoke as General George Armstrong Custer. What’s more, he was in the thick of the fight. The Indian took stock. “It’s ironic,” he told himself, “but I’m General Custer.” Just then an arrow flew past his chin. The Indian as Custer looked around. He and his men were trapped! On the crest of a tree-less rounded hill! With hostile …

With rare international cooperation, Cassini–Huygens took off into the skies. Thus, in nineteen ninety-seven, the creation began to develop before our eyes of the two-decade venture which came to a close with last gazes at giant Saturn’s face to merge with its surface in dramatic death throes as the spacecraft perished with glowing grace. But before that transpired another splendid …

A hissing sound awoke me from a gentle dream of circuses. Light-footed elephants and happy clowns inhabited the dream. I was sad to leave it. “Psst. Are you awake?” The voice emanated from a corner of the pitch black room. “Who is it?” I whispered. “Are you awake?” I threw off the blankets and kicked my feet over the side …

The playground at St. Mary’s was a cracked and bumpy blacktop square maybe a hundred feet long on each side and surrounded by a tall anchor fence on two sides, the school on another, and an old garage that completed the square. The garage was a really low, gray, four-car structure. I was never sure who, if anyone, used it. …

Dwayne catches a cab from the bus station to his parent’s home on Salazar Street. Late afternoon sunlight diffuse and mute like underwater light under a gray Kansas sky flickers through a line of darkening catalpa trees. The cab pulls into his parents driveway. He notices his Dad’s silver Cadillac parked in the garage. He’s ambivalent about seeing his parents …

Shirtless and covered in blood, I walked into the Hooters. John Donne said, God is an angel in an angel, and a stone in a stone, and a straw in a straw. God is a bloody, shirtless man in a Hooters in a bloody, shirtless man in a Hooters. I’d fallen on glass. I was drunk. My sister worked there. …

In the Yed Posterior system, the widely loathed planet DSM-IX gave rise to a race of lumpy beings known as Quacksalvers whose uncommon penchant for diagnosing their neighbors’ maladies drove everyone mad. (Yed Posterior should not nor could not be reasonably confused with Yed Prior, the commonly hailed region known for inventing naps.) At first, folks thought the case studies …

Alcohol will still be everywhere but soon no one can buy any from bars. “You can go home whenever you want, just lock up by 9,” is the last thing my boss says before disappearing out the door. “And wash your hands. We’re filthy.” He wouldn’t be here for the end of an era’s closing time. Our old vices don’t …

I have a full blown tryst with my typewriter on a day the sky hangs upside down over Kovalampatti, shabby as the underside of a dress, seams and all exposed. I’d moved into the narrow neighborhood a fortnight ago with a mission, and have been typing by the window, twitching in despair at the mounting pile of half-finished articles. Mr. …

Don’t be alarmed if alarms alarm in your head. Remember, the lighthouse of your body is in your head. The island of your head. I have a head. It alarmed during the film. But this is because I am a horror fan and this was horror is horror and I got in an argument with a Poet Laureate from Minnesota …

I was just two days into my new place, an upstairs bed with a bathroom down the hall, when I heard what sounded like a pack of wolves. It was ruining my sleep. Wolves? In a two-story walk up dump? It all made better sense after I met the “Backdoor Man.” We were taking out the trash. I introduced myself. …

WARNING: IMPACT IMMINENT COURSE OF ACTION: WAKE PILOT WAKE UP. WAKE UP! Donte Zazzala was sleeping. Deeply. Dreaming of the riches that would one day be his. The women he would have, the drink and the debauchery. The semblance of a smile rested on his scarred sleeping face. YOU ARE FLYING ON A COLLISION COURSE! YOU MUST PULL UP! The ship …

I’m finished with the second box of matzo and we still have a hundred or so miles to go. One piece of matzah every ten to twenty miles. It keeps me awake and I like the way it crunches, changes texture, leaves a slight film in my mouth. I always take a five to ten-mile break between each piece. “Hey,” …

Of course I couldn’t find my sunglasses on what turned out to be the most blinding day of the year, also known as the day Jeff and Ally got married. “It’s rude to wear sunglasses to a wedding,” my own wife reminded me, hand on hip, watching as I lifted everything but the refrigerator in my quest. “According to who, …

Jacey: “Professor Trigger believes we can rediscover childhood through hypnosis.” Bruce: “Pass the cheese puffs.” Jacey: “Really! Reduced peripheral awareness and all that. Think of it! Back to diapers….” Bruce: “Kidding me?” Jacey: “No. Back to bullies….” Bruce: “Who’d want…” Jacey: “…and high school babes.” Bruce: “Stoner. How’d you get into this school?” Jacey: “Rich uncle. Big donations. Kidding. Good …

I do not exist. I died yesterday. I can’t recall the exact date. It doesn’t matter. A year ago, 10, 50 years ago, 1 day, yesterday, it happened. A mad metamorphosis occurred. 1 hour, 1 second, 1 nanosecond ago. Puff! I died. “Oh no,” you say. “You’re still here. I see, hear, and smell you.” “So what?” I say. “But …

Back in 2017 I acquired a mistress, or should I say she attached herself to me. I informed my wife of the mistress and she begin to cry and said can you get rid of her. I said I will try. But now she is with me all the time. She demands to go shopping with me and then I …

People from Newark have a beautiful quality of saying exactly what’s on their mind. From the ages of eleven to thirteen, I played on an AAU basketball team from there－The Newark Rams. A basketball director from a summer clinic in South Orange, New Jersey must have had a wicked sense of humor when she told my mother that my older …

People leaving the stairwell entry in the front row of the bullring’s top tier kept stopping to admire the view, moving on when hearing: “Fucking move!” When Mohican screamed, he stood up. He had stood up a lot. He was in the front row beside the entry. “You’re in the fucking way!” he belched, for the twenty-fifth time. Stunned faces …

It was near noon and the crisp, sea-refrigerated air had evaporated from the cove. The sun was hot, straight up, hovering above the inland ridge of mountains. I was on the rear deck of a trawler, down to my T-shirt. In my sweaty sunburnt hands was an electric drill, plugged into a portable generator on deck. Wiggling the drill bit …

When Markie was a freshman at Irving High, he used to lie in bed and think about murdering his parents. He did not think about getting caught. He did not think about what he’d do with the bodies. He merely thought of getting rid of their unendurable pressure. Markie planned to do it in the dead of night, when his …

Already the second Friday of school, seniors had yet to punish a single freshman boy for his classification, so that night, girls still filling out would be baited by bottles of Boones Farm, and freshmen boys, testicles freshly dropped, could only enjoy beer if they consented to a match in Josh’s hand-built, backyard boxing ring. Though Josh had never beaten …

(excerpt from the short story “Immortal”) Excuse Me Miss, can I ask you a question? ••• Oh, no ma’am, I’m not trying to sell you anything ••• No, no it’s not like that. I just want to ask you something if you would be so kind as to indulge an old man for a little while ••• Well, what could …

What is so special about grass? I ask myself. Is it their presence among our urban mess? Yet it no longer embalms a concept and many people do not believe in its aesthetic, medicinal, or magical essence in this age of malls and plastic magnificence. My dog eagerly rushes to any patch of vegetation on our concrete pavements. She lingers …

The sun on the bare rock-tip is raspberry, above the mingled white of snow, green of wood. ‘Ïmi amintesc de terci,’ crystalizes in Chocolate’s mind. Ioana was from beyond that mount. Maybe she returned. He still lumbers. To his shy heart the bears had been strength. The wood had been a playground. At fourteen he had only known the closing …

I sit in the front seat of my dad’s brown shitbox Honda Civic. It’s my weekend with him and we are on our way somewhere fun at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon. It’s mild outside, even as the sun begins to set. I wear a white shirt and so does he. We match today. We drive past his condo …


I remember one outstanding summer day. Not very hot, with occasional warm rain, but also with a lot of sunshine when you can sit with your buddies in the yard, in the shade, and drink vodka. Perfect. 

The day before I had drunk with my wife all night long and in the morning, she, as usual, went to look for …

I am the loudest animal on the planet, and the funniest looking, Annelise thought, as she trudged through the snow wearing footgear resembling tennis rackets. Over a long white puffy coat, she carried an ugly black- camera necklace. “How do I look, Mom?” she said out loud, looking to the sky. You look noisy, she heard in response, but she …

Now they’d bloody well fucked it. Humanity, having finally realized how much it hated itself, had wiped out its existence from the universe in a nuclear firestorm. Even the politicians were dead, the ones who had pushed the buttons to set the whole thing in motion. The big nuclear powers, seeing the course global politics was taking, had all independently …

I hit the bell boy up for breath mints and on the way up to the bar in the lift and finger combed my hair and repeated my drunken mantra which I believed would allow clear speech: A proper cup of coffee from a Proper copper coffee pot A proper cup of coffee from a proper Copper coffee pot A …

Michael was medicated—by a doctor, no less—and had two dozen nurses and a security guard to make sure he didn’t do anything rash. They were more careful than he knew—nobody else in the hospital had a name like his. It invoked visions of a dozen police cars lined up in front of the building, of litigation, of manipulation of public …

On Independence Day we sat with a former translator Phil in the park near the bronze deer. Soviet soldiers brought it from Goering’s hunting ground and gave it to civilian children. Phil quit translating right after the last default, then worked as a guard and drank like a pig cheap counterfeit vodka called Freedom. We sat, drank Freedom, and talked …

It was about that time that I first started to notice girls. I was twelve and the girls I had known since elementary were growing what my father called “A woman’s curves.” I would spend the summers with my uncle and grandfather in the country, while my parents went on missions with their church. The house was close to a …

I’m crawling up the walls. I’m howling at the moon. I’m drilling holes in the floorboards. I’m eating butter straight from the dish with my fingers. I’m smoking rollies the wrong way ‘round, sucking on a mouthful of tobacco. I’m discombobulated. I’m texting my fiancé in Nigeria. She’s asleep but I’m texting her anyway. When she wakes there’ll be over …

1: Get up in the morning. It’s definitely tricky, especially because she always used to wake you up in the morning, and now the side of the bed is cold where she used to sleep. She was always a morning person. But you’ve got to get up in the morning, nonetheless, and morning is technically before noon, so that’s a …

I’m a voyeur. But rather than surreptitiously stealing glances through the open blinds of a neighbor’s windows while sauntering or crouching behind a bush for a longer gaze, I sit in plain view. I’m right here. I am not a peeping Tom. My name is not Tom. I feign the look of disinterest, but I watch and see what’s going …

Mick went out that evening. There was the Purity Restaurant over on 7th Street and 7th Avenue. Mick was a little down on his luck, figured 7, 11…dice, numbers like that. Walked into The Purity. The place used to be owned by a couple of Greeks and is now owned by a couple of Italians. It also relocated from Union …

“Detective Earl Horsewhite, as I live and breathe, it is you!” Mona LaPiere, chanteuse extraordinaire, had been lounging in the San Angelo P.D. interrogation room for a half an hour, behaving as though she was pool-side at the Hilton. Earl had been observing her the entire time, memories of love and suffering fighting his professional judgment. She’d been exonerated of …

It was not the torso that Greeks and Romans sculpted for generations to immortalize the ideal physique; neither the Celtic mane of a Scottish highlander nor the stature of an Amazonian warrior. It was simply the freckles on his irises that brought it all about, an obsession that changed the entire course of my life. His eyes reminded me of …

It begins in the present. A man sits to write letters. He finds his pen has no ink, but continues to write. This solves the problem of his fear: it frees him. So he writes the letter, puts it into an envelope, addresses it invisibly and prepares it to be mailed. Satisfied, he begins another. And he is freer with …

Up, out of bed at 3 PM. Saturday, San Jose Costa Fucking Rica, rain with a mixture of car exhaust. Gray skies over a gray world, just the Gods reminding me what a hangover looks like. The storm has already saturated the city, flooding streets and low lying areas. The smell triggers my olfactory memory machine to recall fond thoughts …

It’s May, 2012. I’m nineteen, barely. I’m graduating high school with zero prospects. My life is over. You see, I’m working at McDonald’s. I have coworkers in their sixties who have been working at this same corner restaurant in a dead end town for longer than I’ve been alive. You see, I had dreams of getting a scholarship to art …

Among the soft darkness of the coffee house, a distinct scent of rich aroma instantly overwhelms one’s senses, almost purifying them from deep within. It is as if some strange, unforeseen magic had long been buried here, only becoming active when someone crosses the invisible threshold that lies between this hectic, modern world and a completely quiescent world. The wan …

Joe Willy finished filling up his pickup at the self-serve pump and headed toward the store with a grimy twenty-dollar bill. He stopped short and whistled. “Whoa there, Ray Dan, where’d you get that shiner?” Ray Dan shuffled his feet. “Aw, I was defending my mother’s honor. Your mother’s, too.” “Howzat?” Joe Willy didn’t wait for an answer. “You didn’t …

In the summer of 1956, on any Saturday at midnight, especially when the moon was out and the stars were bright, you would be able to see Grandma Groth sitting on her front porch swing waiting for her son Clarence, a bachelor at 53, to make it home from the Blind Man’s Pub. He would have spent another evening quaffing …

Janice picked up her phone to call her mother. I kept my mouth shut. I’d offered a lot of useless advice in the past, but had learned to keep quiet. It was almost the end of October and the phone call was just something that had to be done. I was grateful that Janice was willing to call. “I’m ready,” …

Jack and his mother were so poor they had only a cow. When the cow stopped giving milk, his mother told Jack to sell the cow. You knew that. What about the rest of the story? What about the old man with the beans? Why trade magic beans for a cow? The old man was a secret wizard and was …

Janie was this girl I knew when I lived on East 29th Street near the FDR Drive. I remember her best the night the ambulance came. We’d spent the afternoon drinking and her skin had had this grayish tint like spoiled milk. Her wiry arms were a network of pinholes, a junkie’s connect-the-dots. The apartment was three monastic rooms in …

Jimmy the human. Well, vaguely human. It’s been a long thirty years on the factory floor, A robotic existence, but you’ve made a feed For yourself and the factory fodder you and your wife Spawned at intervals: Funny how their conception times to Celebrations of promotion and pay rises. Like hey baby, I’m financial: let’s procreate! Escape. Lest the mewling …

A history student, entering an ex-magistrate’s shop, always said: “Hi.” The ex-magistrate never answered, the student thinking: “Prick.” “My usual, please,” the student said. The ex-magistrate always wrapped up the wholemeal bread the student always ordered. “It’s delicious with butter and honey,” the student once said. The ex-magistrate just glared. “Bye,” the student always said, never receiving a reply. One …

To this trucker, 9:17 in the morning feels the same way as 9:17 in the evening. But unlike the night before, my rig’s gas gauge was nearly on E outside Vernon, a town that makes the Great Chihuahuan desert a little less bearable. The terrain seemed to be bursting with bulbous water towers, and hotel signs poked out of dead, …

I’ve always hated the smell of almonds. One time when I was fourteen I was baking some cookies. I think they were some sort of vanilla cranberry shortbread cookie. I was very proficient at baking. The recipe called for two teaspoons of vanilla extract, but I wasn’t looking when I pulled the dark brown glass bottle out of the revolving …

“Esmeralda seems to really like you.” “She’s a cat.” “Right, and a cat has no motivation to lie about how she feels about others. She’s very useful when trying to decipher the intentions of those who are in question.” “Does that mean I can leave now?” “No, no, you won’t get off that easy. Even if you’re not directly involved, …

Silence. Matt anguished these situations when natural conversation came to an end and eyes met like magnets drawing the gaze with repellent retreat. His stomach rumbled like thunder, causing his thoughts to inflate. Filling his head with heat he didn’t need. Can she hear me thinking? Matt thought with himself. The paranoia galloping up to his ears. I think she …

While Tony gave a speech in his role as the best man for Gareth the groom, he sported a traditional Nigerian royal blue kaftan, clutching a horsehair fly swatter–clashing with the black-tie event–and reeled off a list of Gareth’s conquests that he’d seduced prior to his bride Jackie coming on the scene. Everyone shifted uncomfortably in their seats but when …

Honestly, how can normal people fall for scams? I received an email from a woman we’ll call Valerie who wanted to meet me. Why? Because I run the support group New Directions, which attracts loads of people. I was to meet her at a fancy restaurant downtown. She would donate $100 to our support group and pick up the tab. …

The way you can’t swallow, a thick throat, swollen with the need for a wet drop, that was their country. The hunter left his family to gather supper, a hog to slaughter. The kill would happen early, while the woman and children would pick cotton. The hunter would return with blood on his hands, food for bellies. With death, there’s …

He buried his corpse in an open field. The evening was filled with utter silence and no living person passed the site. The sky looked perfect pale by the rays of glowing moon. Ajay dusts off his hands clapping strongly, lifts the shovel and starts punching the mud to flatten it. After finishing up he stands unmoved, overwhelmed with pride, …

Nick was in the bedroom, occupied with a musical question. He held a red, Guild Sunburst acoustic guitar. Nick was a musician, and contributed to the support of the small family, along with Donna, the wife. She worked mornings as a kindergarten teacher in a private school. The school was one block east, on Utica Avenue. They were on East …

I come back to a dark house. It’s so dark every time I open the door that I rush to switch on a light. Any light, big, small, doesn’t matter. And in seconds- as I see the outline of furniture and other things kept- the house transforms into a home. (Look at me, investing life into the lifeless. Look at …

Conventional wisdom says never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. I’m not one to defy logic, so I drank several IPAs and drove drunk to the supermarket with my reusable shopping bags and Rocky, my bulldog best friend. He sat in the back of the Subaru drooling on the windows while I shopped.             Navigating the supermarket was a …

So, today I drove to work in a car with no heat on a day that was so cold people even started caring about the homeless. When I got to work, my boss was waiting for me, ready to nag for twenty-five minutes about something somebody else did but averted reasonable suspicions to me because they knew I would just …

It feels like it should be raining. I can’t quite explain why. In novels and films, there would be a constant pattering against my windows. Shadows would be long and strange. Maybe the rain is a baptism, maybe it’s the tears the protagonist won’t cry. If it was an artsy film, there would be no musical score to emphasize how …

“Kerouac would have hated the computer.” “And why is that?” “It would be too tempting to change things.” They always got into that. ••••••• The story was good. It was about a fight in a bar which our writer had the pleasure of witnessing, having been then employed as a musician in that bar. The owner, named Nicky Holiday, was …

Antlers, still attached to frozen plastic bagged deer heads, stare as my husband sits into a sagged old lawn chair in our new garage. Old paint buckets to touch up new scratches we put in our new world pyramid around us. We didn’t need a map to find a home with one another, just a compass. But the damn severed …

It’s not a question of leading. It’s not a question of allowing the other person to be the lead. It’s just a matter of walking. And eventually the right things start to fall into place. I don’t really know how I’m doing what I’m doing. Or I can at least pretend that I don’t know how I’m doing what I’m …

Into a nondescript cardboard box, they packed what remained of her life since she wasn’t one for owning things and due to her great age, although she would argue that there wasn’t much great about living ninety-six years, she didn’t really need much more than her prayer books, her many and ornate crucifixes that she worshiped and even kissed as …

‘ …La nuit, tous les chagrins se grisent; de tout son cœur on aimerait, que disparaissent à jamais, les papillons noirs, les papillons noirs, les papillons noirs…’ From inside his black pea-coat, Jacques took out his phone and looked at its cracked screen. Why he hadn’t changed the ring tone, he had no idea. It had been over seven years …

Those closest will leave Be quick to take offense Smiles are transitory Friends even more so Hold back screams The heart always races at times like this An exploding heart doesn’t kill Dreams of safety do not materialize There are no answers You can’t disappear Over-sensitivity and hyper-vigilance must be permanent Punching a mattress is the best stress reliever Avoiding …

Hello, Nearly Departed: Death has visited you, but yet you still remain. Death has no sting, only a stench. I am writing you to keep the light of life burning bright in you. I wrote this to myself after I was nearly murdered two and a half years ago. Here is what I wrote for all of you, who like …

Vacationing in a small hut on the beach, or rather attending an unimportant convention, we stepped outside to a glorious morning: blazing sun, sparkling sand, gulls glinting and squawking as they swooped above, ocean waves dancing upon the beach. We began the long walk to the convention halls, my wife rapidly, impatiently ahead, gaining ground as usual. She swooped into …

Beatnicks. Road kill. Submissives. A thinning ozone with polar slush on the side. Rape/abduction fantasies; the penitentiary; amphetamines and variety shows. The world bulldozes by, totally oblivious that I’m trying to sleep. Thoughts are as heartless as facts or feelings. You wake up; dreams are kicked into yesterday; you wake up and you think you’ve slept in; it’s 6:25 AM. …

Customer: I tried to pay with PayPal for my Serenity Serum. My PayPal Transaction ID is o-4AR19803G257038B. I entered the payment at 9:55 PM. Reggie: Good evening! I will be happy to help you. May I have your Street Address, City, State and Zip Code to locate your order? 9:56 PM. Customer: Yet, End of Time webpage said I need …

I once worked as the night shift charge nurse for Oak Street Care Center. The hospital where I worked prior to that went bankrupt. So I took the job at the Care Center, a skilled nursing home in my own town. I had been nursing for 13 years by then. In that time I had seen a lot of changes …

I had been accepted to Oxford University after writing and winning an essay contest entitled, America and Britain-brother countries. In my essay I had wrote how America had gained its independence, yet there was still a connection between the two countries. We are sometimes brother countries. The university would pay my flight, room, board and tuition. I had never visited …

Around narrow trunks, thoughtlessly spread lights wrap bare trees reaching towards the end of the year. Etched initials on bark are all that exists, nothing lives in the trees. No shadows cover main street’s potholes as Christmas steps dry out on downtown asphalt, the only audience for strung lights atop closed businesses. By the nativity scene between a Spanish-speaking Baptist …

Most people thought our house was haunted because my brother killed himself in the attic. The police said it wasn’t really a suicide. It wasn’t neglect either. No one would’ve thought Grandpa’s old war guns could’ve been loaded. I guess I shouldn’t have told him what was up there. But no one would’ve guessed they still worked. I haven’t been …

Nathan and Mona both were looking forward to Aaron’s arrival. Besides the fact that they both enjoyed his company, his presence kept them from fighting. Things were becoming difficult between them since Mona had stopped having sex with Nathan around the time she started pursuing Trevor. Aaron was coming over to watch movies with them. It had evolved into a …

“I don’t think it was the weed.” “Something environmental?’ “Doubt it. We breathe the same air.” “But her test scores are impossibly high.” “She’s not.” “Sleep hygiene?” “You kidding? She gets up every three to four hours–something to do with an irritable bladder, I think.” “Glad she’s your roommate, not mine.” “But she helps me with papers.” “You’re a design …

It didn’t take me a second to fall for his eyes. Hazelnut brown, a tinge of blue and there I was. Flat on a floor, heart beating on the ground, tongue-tied. He was the only man in the room that did not mind me whistling. In fact, it appealed to his senses so much that I’d be greeted with surprise …

One: Jefferson We sat on the front porch, the whole lot of us, the Washington family, knowing that yes our folk of all different hues of brown, were born of the first father of our country, our country too. Granny, born of a young slave girl, had nearly died today, fell down once again, not good for much, she was …

“David, come with me, please.” Mr. Watson thundered. His normally happy, half stoned face was solemn as he pushed himself up from his desk and gestured toward the hallway. Everyone in the classroom looked up from their quizzes and love notes and knives gouging fancy S’s into the desks to watch me follow Mr. Watson into the hall. I glanced …

What theory unifies forces, weak, strong, with gravity— also, to which belong all the string theories of why and because? To answer these queries, M-theory does. Proponents aver it offers clarity as to the issue of singularity. Where there’s a will there’s a way, so they say… In the beginning our universe sprang from membranes colliding to cause a Big …

“Hey, look at this,” Alice said. “A hearse for sale. Five hundred dollars.” “Who’s selling it?” “See for yourself.” Alice tossed her husband the newspaper. “’60 Cadillac Hearse,” he replied. “Says to call Max. Hope I’m not too late.” An hour later, Herman knocked on the door of the mortuary. Max, the mortician, answered. “I called about the hearse,” Herman …

Out of concern her family keeps a constant watch over her, the youngest leaf on an ancient tree, so very eager to flutter with the slightest breeze. Filial feelings dictate on nearby twigs to sermonize the little chick whose veins contain the thinnest blood. Deep-rooted in the soil, her father is keen on having his fretful kid enjoy a gravity-free …

David Newton, young project manager, was in a harshly lit meeting when he realized that he’d rather die than spend another stupid month at his job. The conversation among his coworkers, now as always, was dry and droning—the sound of life passing you by. But where else could he go? The arts were his passion but not his talent. He …

I grew up thinking my mother was magic. She recited memorized poetry in the bath every night and when she was home (which was often), she was naked, if not in her long silk robe that always drooped lazily, untied, and exposing her all the same. She smelt of rum and frankincense and had hair so long and so thick …

I can’t think of a better job. I’m the third-generation mailman in my family. We call ourselves “mailmen” and won’t change that term no way, no how. Grandpop worked in Germantown, Daddy worked in Bucks County, and me, the only girl, I work in Huntingdon Valley, PA. Lordy, Lordy. What a gorgeous area that is. Would you believe I’ve been …

When I climb out of the KIA I notice an old man standing by his suburban. I look to where he’s staring and see a woman behind her covered pickup. The tailgate is down and she is moving metal cages around that hold small dogs. I think she must be a rescuer. The woman must bend over to do this …

You are sitting at home one Wednesday afternoon when you get a call. 9-1-1, you are having an emergency, the voice on the other end says. You decide to remain calm. You ask her to be a little more specific. That’s not my department, she explains, I can transfer you, but there’s a three-to-five minute hold-time, and by then….I understand, …

Zenobia Jackson told Officer Murphy that her husband Rufus was 73 years old and a wonderful man when he was awake, but for the past year he had been jerking. Something terrible during his sleep and had kept waking her up. He’d swing his arms, she said, like those martial arts men he liked to watch so much on television. …

Two new crutches and two double shots of Bushmills Irish Whiskey enabled Joe Faherty to move from the back seat of Moira Murphy’s 1976 Buick into Eagan’s Funeral Home for Tim McGillicuddy’s wake. At 87, Joe was in bad shape, only a tad better than McGillicuddy who looked splendid in a rococo casket. The way the funeral home had painted …

we need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope Three days hiking, relentlessly setting up tiny tent in the rain, taking down in the nonstop rain. Nothing ever dries. Crawling into a damp sleeping bag, rain thrumming against the fly. Coffee never hot enough to defeat the chill. Climbing miles, and miles back down. All the scenic …

I sank deep into a worn out couch that had felt the weight of more bodies on it than the world’s shoulders. I glanced around the room whilst taking a sip of my drink. Saturday nights always drew large crowds into the city. The stresses of paid slavery seemed to drive the people crazy and they loved to pound them …

The excitement of the new project had begun to fade away. Adventure became regular in face. My enthusiasm level was at five then, not completely worn off but I was in need of a caffeine shot to wake up from the drowsy non-happening routine. I had already been to all the markets and captured culture on a reel. The initial …

My son lives in a small town. Recently, I was helping him move to a new apartment not far from the one he’d been living in for the past five years. The old apartment is a 1930s or ‘40s era city office building that had been converted decades ago into housing. It’s located on a beautiful little trout stream that …

It’s the same scene today as it is every morning: my husband amuses himself with the stock market, the children get dressed for school, I toss up breakfast and the sun streams through the open window. I am in a state of constant dissatisfaction. Frenzy. Turmoil. I walk around with the same unanswered questions. We want our partner to remain …

’twas 1978, early morn on the eve of all Eves, snow came crashing in waves of big fat flakes that blasted our dingy urban world in a blanket of white wintry innocence. As I recall decades later, with nostalgic-tinted glasses, the mundane neighborhood landscape seemed to turn magical as I looked out the fogged-up windows and saw this dream scene. …

I am under seige. It’s late, a fierce Wyoming wind is rattling the aluminium walls of my trailer and during lulls I’m sure I can hear footsteps scrunching outside. Fools. This ain’t my first rodeo. Just this evening I flipped on the tube and there, like some hideous golem from my past, was Exhibit A – leering at me from …

I am aware of the fingers clutching my jaw, the green eyes that incarcerate my shrinking visual field. He won’t come with me, not this time, this time it’s a rite of passage. He blows the smoke into my mouth. I feel my uvula shudder. Today I become a man or I lose my shit trying. Leaves and slicks of …

I found a new thrill in the summer of 1968. I compiled a list of New York cemeteries allegedly haunted by ghosts. Then one afternoon, I drove upstate in search of Scarlet Hollow Cemetery in Freaksburg, New York. I got lost a few times before I arrived in Freaksburg. When I found the town, I parked my car, went to …

While I’m the recipient of Happy Springs’ Senior Citizen Prize, I can’t comprehend why my art’s heralded as precious. Five-year-olds can knock together found objects. True sandbox pals attribute value to most refuge, even stuff, which after being turrets and moats, is tossed aside as bottle caps, lost memory sticks, broken rubber bands, and paper clips-gone-wonky. When my neighbor Jim-Jam …

They were working for Manpower in Dallas back about ‘78, around fifteen of them, unloading furniture in the sweltering August heat, carrying it into the forty rooms of a new La Quinta Inn on Central Expressway. Lisbeth was the only woman on the team. The foreman was desperate and took her on because she was six foot two. Lisbeth needed …

Fuck, shit, damn and all that crap! I’ll fail without it. I just know it! Faith is fallacious. My ambitions find ostracism. My skull complains for lack of joy. Satisfaction is without a doubt MIA. Damn company cursing such an affliction upon this sorry, sad soul! That much cash to fix a slab of carbon? Silly, isn’t it? Nay- ridiculous! …

One The moon laid a strip of light on the dark ocean. The reflection was soft except for the crests of the waves catching the light sharp and white. The ocean seemed so quiet. “Nothing.” John outlined roughly the shape of the moon. “You don’t think it’s a little windy out here?” He held up his right hand to gesture …

We took Shelly’s car. “Shelly,” I said over the phone, “have you looked outside today? It’s a sheet of ice. My car door won’t open.” “Oh, so you don’t want to go visit Willie today?” “I didn’t say that. Of course I want to visit your brother. I just don’t want to drive. Can you pick me up?” Naturally I …

That morning, I felt as miserable as a vampire with a toothache. Sure, no one forced me to watch an Evil Dead triple-header until four a.m., but equally the world had to be a fault for making me get out of bed, let alone go to work. I crawled into yesterday’s shirt and trousers, ate toast and stared vacantly at …

David was studying when his father came home. His father’s face glowed, same as the mahogany table David sat upon. The wood looked burnished by silver light. “Elizabeth and I are getting married,” his father said. Frank sat for the first time ever with his son at that table that was owned by Frank’s mother. “When?” David asked. “The date …

A mosquito turned to his wife one day and said, “You’re a blood-sucker.” “And you’re an asshole,” the wife shot back. “What?” the husband said. “No, no, no. You misunderstood me. I didn’t mean it like that. I was just stating a fact. You are a blood-sucker. You land on animals and poke them and siphon blood from them like …

As kids, most of us listened to nursery rhymes; as adults, many of have read nursery rhymes to our own children or grandchildren. But seldom do those verses show the nursery rhyme parents. To remedy that oversight, here’s a brief look at one parent. “Say there. Piper. I haven’t seen you at the bus stop for about a week now. …

When someone quits you, for whatever reason, even death, there are parts of you that languish, anger, and wither. You fallow empty of sun, thirst for rain. It can be an emotional cardiac arrest, or a diabetic depression, coma. Instinctively you know, just as the removal of slivers won’t fall trees, to survive, you need to keep growing. A broken …

Sheila, my dog, used to be a very fine dog. She was quiet, well behaved and a gentle companion. She’s a Toy Australian Shepherd, 15 inches tall and 15 pounds, with no tail to speak of and a fondness for chasing rabbits. For a few years I really did not believe that any finer dog ever existed.’ So you can …

Of all the cell phone apps, the best by far is My Friend. It is a smart phone app for lonely people, including lonely married people, like me. At least I was married until a month ago. Think of all the friends you have. Isn’t there some little thing wrong with every one of them? No one is perfect, after …

300-500 words concerning your purpose for undertaking graduate study your reasons for wanting to study your research interests professional plans career goals. Dear Mr. and Mrs. School Monger, I am an important figure in the history of writing here in the United Republic of the State of My Apartment’s Swimming Pool. And I will be a very important figure in …

My partner was driving me nuts. We work for a company that does financial research and analysis. When we’re assigned a project, I do the research part, using the internet to get all the information I can. I give the data to Ben and he uses computer algorithms to analyze it, then he generates a report. By the way, I’m …

Mom had a way with nails. One bitter Michigan winter, she pounded beef steaks to the back of the house. I didn’t see this with my own eyes. Heard it from my brother-in-law Leroy who explained that the frig hadn’t been working for the last two years. It’s possible that I was more embarrassed than he. A few years later, …

Where do good feelings come from? They are tucked away and concealed in a calming, charming, and uplifting voice; they are within the frame of an embracing, delightful, and warm soul; they are within tiny acts that aren’t oft committed in the world; they are within the reassurances of the words “I’ll always be here”; they are within every smile …

It made no sense to Montgomery that a brilliant man, i.e. himself, couldn’t negotiate with the neighborhood bully for the release of his granddaughter’s kitten. Accordingly, he grabbed his favorite rake and a handful of plastic garbage bags and headed toward the delinquent’s house. Partway there, he turned to regard the footfall of the person following him. That awful kid …

My first response to the accident? I was catatonic. “They’re all dead. They’re all dead.” I don’t know how many times I repeated it. I’m sure I sounded mechanical. That was my first response on January 28, 1986 to the shuttle Challenger disaster. At 11:39 in the morning. Seventy-three seconds of that day started the darkest period of my life. …

Monday Without warning, the box explodes. Birds pour out, flood the room, then settle. I prod one; it whirs, re-settles. Not birds at all, but yellow, fist-sized drones. Kathy dashes in. “What’s going on, grandpa?” Her eyes light up. “Hey, Dronedogs!” A latecomer rises from the box and lands on her head. “Dronedogs?” My ten-year-old granddaughter rolls her eyes. “Flying …

A man fiddles with his top button and recounts his sadness. I sit, half-listening, as the speakers above us garble. With music or talk radio, I’m not sure. When I’ve had enough I go outside to smoke a cigarette. Someone asks to borrow my lighter and calls it pretty even though it’s not. I listen to three strangers discuss politics …

On the eve of the new year, Oksana invited me to her place to acquaint with her parents. In the corner of the room stood the Christmas tree, and in front of it, right on the floor, sat Oksana dressed like a toy from a Department store. “Well, you look okay, ” I told her, not even daring to sit …

Nobody likes “the professor,” but he does throw great parties. Lots of good-looking yuppies, excellent food and an open bar. A distinguished professor of psychology at the City University, he owns a huge apartment in The Dakota, a landmarked building on Central Park West. He never could have afforded it on his salary but he earns substantial royalties from his …

The phone rings incessantly on this seething August night. It is 3 A.M. but the night call does not disturb my sleep. You see, I suffer from insomnia, my air conditioner is broken, and on this oppressively hot night, I sweat profusely. “Hello,” I growl. “I need your help,” the eerie voice whispers. “Who are you?” “Don’t you know?” “No.” …

The border between Paterson and Clifton is a double white line that runs down the middle of Crooks Ave. There was a party on Crooks Ave. one Saturday night. It was not as much fun as Ramon had anticipated. As it wound down, Ramon and a Clifton girl wandered into the cemetery on the Paterson side of the street and …

He’d seen their eyes stare at him when he read, in front of bars and tables. The eyes looked serious and fixed under the night lights, like he was saying something important. John Hynes had experiences like that reading. A musician called John Hynes over one night. They were in a bar. John Hynes knew the guy slightly. “I like …

In science class, the teacher was telling us that human beings can’t lay eggs and that only chickens can lay eggs, but I piped up, “Humans can lay eggs, you’re wrong, you stupid teacher!” The teacher said, “Well, that’s what all the smartest people in the world say is true and you can prove it through science. You can poop …

There are normal days on highway 56 going Southbound: Traffic at standstill, the late august heat making the air sticky and heavy with the pungent odor of gasoline, the sounds of a hundred cars clenching on their brakes at various intervals, and the disharmonious din of opposing music genres melting together through the tops of open windows, every driver sighing …

There is a light in the abandoned house across the road; a half crescent shape winks towards me, a solitary tooth in a cold grin. What would it be like to be a clock? To feel time, to understand each second like a friend or lover? Would every second be the same and act the same as it passed over …

The problem is that there are three problems. First problem is that Clyde can’t cry. Hasn’t cried in, what, a year? Second problem, he has stopped moving. Literally. Well, not quite literally. He goes to the shop to satiate thirst and hunger with cheap food—chocolate-covered matchsticks, milkshakes and matzos. But still, his movements are decreasing. He stopped going to work, …

I can no longer look at them. They make me sick: the kind of nausea that a sheltered catholic school girl gets on her first night at the university. They’re very white and very dreadfully boring, but there’s nothing else to do. At least I can say that they’re strong enough to barricade all of the hideous things from which …

Characters Lisa and Mike. 20-40 years old, but of roughly the same age. Not a couple, just a couple good friends. Nothing apparently remarkable. Should be dressed in the current fashion of the age, but with color. They both have Bi-polar Syndrome. Death. Normal looking man. Dressed in dull clothing, maybe khakis and a gray sweatshirt. Setting Stage should be …

George Tango sat on the L train, on the gray, hard seat. He spotted a Liz Smith gossip column headline in an open News, spread wide by a middle-aged man in a slightly weird, off-green Hamburg hat. George got off the train dulled by the headline of Liz Smith, dulled by the weather, dulled by life. He walked one-half block …

They had the kind of house that looked like no one lived in it. It was a beautiful three story brick home with a brilliantly polished wood staircase curving down the middle. Each piece of furniture in the living room was positioned too far apart from the others, as if to avoid confrontation. On the coffee table a photo album …

“Have we got anything to eat?” she asked, shattering the silence with her jagged crystal voice, “Have we got any fish? I want a fish,” she added, looking at me sidelong, not quite sure of her own motives. Her face was shadowed by the headrest. To me, she seemed like a horse underwater, not struggling but submitting to the environment. …

He records the weight and breadth of her censorious words every night in his notebook. He keeps a chart of his tears, another of her screams, and a few tick boxes for the scarcity of halcyon days. His face has become a topography of his ill-hidden fears of displeasing a woman who had hijacked the best of his years. He …

Bizarre! The dream woke him up with a start. Such a dream will wake up any guy! A shudder passed through him. Dead of night—the howl of a stray dog added to the uneasiness. Was it a premonition? The Grim Reaper stared malevolently; neon sign lit up the urgent message on the billboard, at the interstate highway, his car waiting …

“It’s been a while,” she says quietly, her fingers running over the scars on my arm. Like she can see my past and future, like palm reading. I wonder, briefly, how that would sound: You have lived a hard life, the fortune teller might say. This one indicates you will lead a long life. And I would think, no, it …

He casually looks around, and his eyes begin to swell with a sort of impatient madness. He begins to fidget, leaning from one leg to the other, grinding his teeth, as an infant howls throughout the confined corridor. He hates himself for having become one with the many who thrive on the caffeinated concoction of original blend with milk and …

We breakfast together on grapes and figs while lying on wild grass, take a walk around our island, fill our eyes with sea, fill our ears with bird song. I drive her to the Loose Wolf where she lunches with the women who tend to the island gardens. I sit six feet away and watch her out of the corner …

I wake from my afternoon nap in my office, rise from my fold-out chair and push the button to trip the electric switch that will lift the roll-down blinds that cover the sliding glass doors that face the sea. Nothing. I turn on the lights. Nothing. I can see a crack of sunlight where the blinds don’t quite meet the …

At the beginning of the summer, in the heat, I hit the bottle. My wife, as usual, kicked me out of the house. I had absolutely no place to go. For a while I cried at the window and begged her to let me in, but then I remembered that Father gave me the number of his new mobile the …

Some people experiencing homelessness are people experiencing a good gig. They could choose to experience employment, but some, like my one-time next-door neighbour Brady, feel that being on the dole works fine, and a tent in a park is pretty good shelter in a mild climate. Better than paying rent. Some tenters augment their assistance cheque by drug-dealing or shoplifting, …

So it goes like this. My good friend Morgan and I assumed the driving duties. Our other good pals Justin and Nick were in the back seats tripping their balls off on mushrooms saying how beautiful the trees were. Morgan drove the first half of the trip from campus and then we switched and I took over for the rest …

Where to begin? I guess it all started one day in November. I had recently extracted myself from a relationship that I will not mention to spare myself any embarrassment that I might have brought upon myself. I was a fool to think that anything would work with Linda. She wanted to settle down to a life of banal necessity. …

Neville had always told me that he pictured himself from a very young age as the type of individual who was very successful and powerful. He dreamed big. He said at the age of five instead of playing Ninja Turtles with his friends, he was El Capitan, the commander of a vast army, busting down the doors of citizens and …

Dominica had a beehive like Amy Winehouse, like Marge Simpson. It was a strange beast, natural but with a fake sheen. If someone needed a pen or a lighter, even a cup of tea, she just reached inside and pulled out whatever was needed. Chris, her ten-year-old nephew, was fascinated by her tricks and at a family gathering hosted by …

The priest had been there earlier and the rosary was said; relatives and friends in single file were offered condolences. “Sorry for your troubles,” one by one they said, bending over Maggie Murphy, the widow silent in her rocker, a foot or so from Paddy, resplendent in his casket, the two of them much closer now than they had ever …

There’s this show on MTV called Ridiculousness, where Rob Dyrdek, 42, is the coolest, most quick-witted, snap-backin’est, high schoolin’est adult ever, and he spends 22 minutes of a half hour around 10pm laughing at and narrating videos he selected from the part of the internet where people get hurt. He wears snapbacks bearing the Monster Energy Drink logo and overlarge …

The sandwich shop sneeze guard is layered with disgust, a windshield driven through a locust plague. Braelynn leaves the stack of hardening foot-long shells of bread to clean the circular common patio table of ladies who arrived fifteen minutes until closing time in a Baptist shuttle to order twelve six inch tuna sandwiches. No chips, diet Pepsis. Across the floor, …

The heat had become unbearable that summer. “Make it stop, daddy,” Liddy’s son, Torin, said, as they walked home from school. The sun glared down with a vengeance, its rays like vicious lapping tongues. It seemed to Liddy that the sun was angry at the earth. “I can’t make it stop,” said Liddy. “But we’ll be home shortly. Mom will …

On paper, everything had been done more or less correctly. Married her college boyfriend, they both had good jobs, their son, albeit skinny and spotted, was doing well in school. Money in the bank. Equity. It was their thirtieth wedding anniversary and it was the year they were supposed to open the wine they bought on their honeymoon and saved …

Friendship’s the wine of life; but friendship new is neither strong nor pure—Bunko was reading Ernest Young’s Night Thoughts in your bedroom. Reading’s a practice you shared since the early days of your marriage. You smiled endearingly, watched his Adam’s apple move up and down, listened to his solemn baritone reverberate. Bunko enjoyed your undivided attention. But that was two …

Out in Brooklyn, they wore fedoras, but their mouths sounded different. ‘The problem I have is that he’s fucking lying.’ ‘I have a problem with these cocksuckers, too.’ ‘Sartre would be turning over in his grave.’ ‘Yeah, he hated when a man disguised the social for the personal.’ Frankie called Uncle Paulie, 718-258-1212, at the Boston Road Lounge, Bronx. A …

I lift my eyes from my work as a light moves across the living room—the sun glinting off her windshield as she approaches the house. My thoughts are drowned out by the muted crackle of tires slowing their roll against the road. Apprehension turns to dread, turns to defeat, as the garage door opens and the whole house hums. Her …

Dave and I sat outside the coffee shop on 6th Street, the one with the crazy Russian Barista who told stories, mostly with an insane and violent bent. The coffeehouse was the place for the dregs, the crazy and the downtrodden, sipping small coffees in between screams, fearful ranting and meth-induced rocking. I knew Dave through Gonzalez, John Gonzalez to …

People watching. I do it all the time, as it is a great way for me to escape the madness of the city without actually going anywhere. Most of the time the people I see or the stories I watch unfold would leave my memory within a few weeks. Hardly ever did these stories leave a lasting mark on my …

I, __________, do hereby grant permission for my wife, Lucia Lopez-Costner, to have discreet sexual adventures with other men (or women) provided she agrees to the following terms and conditions: 1. Lucia agrees to have protected sex unless provided with current STD test results. 2. Lucia agrees to make clear that their business is strictly for pleasure, and nothing else …

His name was Billy Ray, and he was anything but country. Billy Ray was the Peter Pan of the jazz scene during the 80s in Oklahoma City. The bass player had come of age in the 60s during the birth of free jazz. It was then he had found his religion and never strayed from the altar of Miles, Monk …

Excerpts from Sleeping Beauty Picking Up the Thread Rumor went round and round the land and even abroad of a most beautiful sleeping princess Rosamond, as you know I was called, who was encircled by an impassable thorn thistle which prickly creeping hedge had plot-thickened year after year after year for nearly ten decades and that within that intriguing aculeate …

Tony got up from the hotel bed and yawned as he pulled his Dolce and Gabbana jeans from the desk chair. “Seriously, Helen, do you know that you sound like a pig when we’re sleeping together?” Helen tried to laugh off his latest jibe at her lovemaking. “I can’t help myself, it’s in the genes.” “What does snoring have to …

“Hello, Trisha Donnelly, Mindful Child Publications, correct? Sorry I read your name tag there, well, in advance, thanks for a moment of your time, Trish. Can I call you Trish? Oh, sorry, no that’s better isn’t it, Mrs. Donnelly? Oh, of course! More business-like. Thank you. You see I have this fantastic idea for a children’s picture book that I …

She grabbed me by the balls in the alley near the fashionable beer joint Mug, where all sorts of outcasts usually hung out. Intelligent, sometimes talented young people thrown out of the roadside of life by the damned community of worst philistines, punitive organs and the middle-class hypocrites. We drank all that was available at that plague time: the fatal …

Researchers at the Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Research Center were talking while looking at the wide screen showing numerous stars as dots, floating rocky planets and gaseous clusters. “This one is located twenty light years away. The planet should be habitable with the right gravity and pressure as is revolves around its star very comfortably in the goldilocks zone” “Does it have …

How much longer? Don’t know. I don’t remember it being this long last time. No, last time was over quickly, but I remember another time I waited almost three hours. We’ve been waiting almost an hour. Doesn’t matter. It’s going to be worth it. We’re getting new faces, remember? Faces of a better quality than we ever had before. Guess …

It was the late seventies and I’d never known any woman like Marie, who would cover one whole wall of her room with naked men centerfolds taken from Playgirl Magazine. Marie had graduated from the university in Cedar Park and was now in a medical program at Galveston’s Sealy Medical Center to become a medical photographer. “You’ve got some interesting …

Christmas had come and gone and he was home alone. So he started drinking heavily. It was an easy life when he was by himself with no one to tell him what to do. He sat on his couch in his living room and looked out the window – he saw a park with many trees across the road. He …

Pleasing Quibble is not licensed to operate a grazenda, but the crowds that come to see him are so large and appreciative that the authorities are loathe to step in and arrest him. One unlicensed grazenda operator should not be the source of a riot. Nonetheless, the authorities plot: harmless though Quibble may seem, the law is the law. Order, …

I roam a lot. All day long I keep walking from one place to another. Sometimes, I have gone as far as the university where I had studied several years ago, when I was young and ambitious. I wander everywhere in the university. I don’t just visit my department but go to other departments also which I didn’t do when …

Most haven’t a clue what to do here on Earth to fix our gargantuan plights… Still Dwarf Planet Pluto in Kuiper Belt ring, in that most amazing of flights, has been closely surveyed, contemplated, perceived, scrutinized, photographed, (not to mention its moons), long after discoverer Tombaugh departed, though ashes of his were on board the spacecraft in its celebrated flyby …

There is a saying that has been around for quite some time now: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me. I reckon just about everyone, whether five or fifty, have heard these words several times over. Now often said by those who had just moments before sent their own verbal arrows flying right into …

The second psychiatrist I spoke with was Dr. Knowit —Barbara Gowers, the first, committed suicide at 6:00 pm and I left at 5:45. With such a suggestive name, how could I not investigate his schtick? I had as many questions as I had nonsense answers for his. For this diagnostic session, I cleaned up well, according to my mother.   “Did …

I went for a walk the other day. I stepped out with no place in mind. I was tired of seeing the same old things, and needed some fresh ideas. Sadly, each corner had old branches hanging over stop signs, bent from vandals. That 76’ Sedan Deville, still hanging on to chromed spoke wheels, was as stuck to asphalt, as …

Day World Hickory Dickory days, divided into boxes— Time to eat breakfast. (Finish all your egg!) Wash your hands and face. Brush your teeth. (Always up and down.) Sit on the toilet. Wipe front to back. (But never why.) Story time— play time— lunch time— nap time. Take the key and wind her up. If she hollers, shut her up. …

Kester requested courses. Thus, Oboe, Advanced Poetry Workshop, Dynamics and Equilibria, an independent study of melanoma research, and Latin III were scheduled. Mom was a pathologist, Dad a collagen scaffold engineer, and Sis a nuclear radiologist. Kester was the rebel. That coed dropped out midterm, anyway. Family knowledge, friends’ good wishes, even lessons with a master yogi hadn’t prevented recurrence. …

Not everything in my childhood was forged with gold. We frequently stayed with our indulging grandparents and basked in their trustworthy hands, but I was occasionally entrusted to the care of the treacherous type, a few family friends with whose children I was accustomed to play. We were once driven to a steep cliff that overlooked a vast expanse of …

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all the slaves. And yet slavery is widespread in the United States in the 21st century. Only today the slaves are called robots. Robots are owned by human beings. They are not paid for their labor. In most places they have no rights. They do not get the nights or weekends …

One day Perry Beckett took a pulled pork sandwich to Bone’s basement and when he got there, he said he wished he had told them to put more sauce on it. “So take it back over there and tell them you want more sauce on it,” said Bone. “They got the sauce in squeeze bottles on the counter,” said Perry …

An auspicious event, a job interview, but what was I to wear for such a formal meeting? One suit could do but it needed matching shoes. The allowance money that I received every two weeks would have to be sacrificed. A pair of designer shoes on display met my eyes the moment I entered a grand store. I could not …

I suppose I am a little boy now? How in the world did this sex change occur? When I wasn’t looking. Oh, I suppose like a manikin. I will never forget those goddamned Southern Baptists blaming me for having been raped and then condemning me, shunning me, throwing me literally out of the band. I do not forget. I will …

Susan Metcalf had retired 15 years ago from a job in the insurance business. She had never married and had invited her 92-year-old mother to come into her house to live. They were going to one of many doctor appointments on a dreary Monday morning in mid-January, Susan knew the routine too well. Finding a parking place close to the …

Story of my life! I’m in my head instead of wherever my feet are planted and it’s all about me. That’s what happened last week and I’m still afraid to go back to the gym. Should I find another? Pretend nothing happened? Ask that authorities get involved? Why can’t I decide? Here’s what I did or didn’t do. It was …

You never invite the women you sleep with into your bed because she’s the one you’ll eventually marry. The couch is for the girls you pick up, and while they aren’t always prostitutes, your luck with women usually mean they are. You can’t recall her name, but nameless is better. The woman lies on the couch where you’ve both done …

1. I would like to tell you a story that usually is not appreciated much when I have told it to others throughout the years. The kind of humor that many of us appreciated back in those days is pretty much extinct. At the time of this story, there was a soybean processing plant just outside of a very small …

Over the weekend my wife’s Honda wouldn’t start. I went out to the garage to tinker under the hood but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Monday morning, she said she was taking my Pontiac to work and I could walk. The bus stop was just around the corner from our house but I had to get off at …

I’m dying. I need emergency surgery. But I can’t leave my blood-red studio apartment, an antediluvian basement in a 2-family house on Thanatos Street, Brooklyn, New York. I’m too ill. In the past few weeks, I’ve called 911 a couple times, and when EMS arrived, they took me to the ER. On these occasions, the doctors admitted me for a …

It was the night of the slumber party. The little brother served bowls of ridged potato chips and garlic and onion dip to the teenage sister and her friends in pajamas. But wait! Wasn’t there a truck driving past the house at that moment? Try to remember! The truck was painted violet with decorative tendrils of fuchsia, and silver, remember? …

Sara It was a fantabulous ski trip, until a snorm caused fragitation for travelers, including her.  Put up in a motel, she arrived with EarPods on, podcast pulsing, ginormous swollen portmanteau challenging her every move. That snarky pre-gate agent with the one-inch ridiculashes had doubted that the luggage latch would hold, she thought.  Hah! Ready to chillax, she plopped the suitcase down and …

For decades anyone in the world who wanted protection from the evil, brutal hands of reality could rely on one hero. That hero is CAPTAIN WHATABOUTISM! Armed with the powers of double-speak, explosive Red Herrings, Cloak of Hypocrisy, the Self-Righteous Shield of Deflection, and his super computer Social Media, Captain Whataboutism is able to protect the people who lives in …

As a little girl I always puzzled over the idea that witches, like Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched rode broomsticks. Of course, I was young and a little too literal-minded to realize that a broom is not always a broom, and that there are many forms of “brooms,” kind of like the proverbial “womb broom.” When I came of age I …

Penelope loves being a tourist in her own town. Today, she is touring the OUE, the tallest building in DTLA (Downtown LA.) Its height exceeds any other building between Chicago and Singapore at 73 stories. Roundish and all glass to give people on each level the illusion there is openness around them, the building lulls them into forgetting there never …

My ex-husband and I bought a used Winnebago for $111,000. A doctor of jurisprudence, Michael had never gotten over me. The feeling was not mutual. Now in our sixties, I felt sorry for the man. His third wife, Nedra, had died. He’d made widows of every single woman he’d married or dated. He was always a terrible driver, even when …

Mother tosses that gold ring down the toilet. It strikes the bottom. Clink. “A metaphor for your father.” She laughs. Laughter cracked. She holds the handle, as if one gesture will unleash something frightening. As if he hasn’t been gone a whole year. “Shall I?” “Go for it.” I remember Dad making the announcement, words so matter-of-fact. Mother’s words, husky, …

They thought that for him there is no more salvation and decided on the last, desperate move. Early in the dawn, they went by boat to the outer limits coast and stopped at the place where the sea flows into a specific river, supposedly healing, but no one came back from where it was left. Something had barely spoken for …

“Make less noise,” said the hotel owner, somewhere between a request and a command, while I walked up the stairs to my room. His near shout left me befuddled. But I most certainly sensed aggressiveness in his tone, something I had probably earned during my three day stint at the Hotel whatever-the-fuck it was called. I made my way up …

There once was a putz named Run-On Ron after some poor sod who always tripped when he ran and became useful as a human speed bump in the same way beer supports the morale of the  working man that usually complains about not enough money but hates to work overtime when life is too short on some kind of dream …

In the Egyptian desert, prayer in the air, the legend about the origin in an ancient tomb in golden letters written memories. Hordes of demons in the year of the wilderness, the cry from the grave, the light in the sand, hordes are getting closer, changing shape, a saint in heaven hermit in prayer, the girl in the river. River …

Don’t cry to me about your shopping stress in December when parking lot surveillance cameras are capturing men with white beards who only look like me breaking into automobiles and mugging people in mall parking lots, while local news outlets vie for coverage, reporting on Santas pretending to collect toys for charity, or worse, rampaging in red-clad mobs like those …

When you looked me in the eye, and, without blinking, told me it was over, I, as a friend, stopped being concerned. Even though, as a man, I worried about finagling the whole thing all these years. But, as a priest, I am alert to lies. A major part of my job description is devoted to discerning the permutations of …

Come in! came a voice. Hurley went in and confronted a bald well-built man in a wife beater undershirt with an electric guitar strapped on, playing scales slowly with no amplifier to the tick tock of a tall red metronome. He didn’t stop when he saw Hurley. He just nodded What do you need? I need your name. The ticking …

“Brother, calm down. They will be here. Twenty more minutes, OK?” I don’t want to hear that. I really don’t. I have already been standing here in this two-bit DVD store for over half-an-hour. I don’t need it then. I need it now. “First, I fuck you, then my friend fuck you, OK?” And, no, I don’t want to hear …

Screwdriver seems to be an ideal cocktail but not everybody shares this opinion. I got sucked into making one after reading an article in a magazine, one you wouldn’t touch if you weren’t sitting in barbershop, waiting for your turn. Screwdriver－two ingredients: long-awaited drunkenness and a mild state of euphoria, things that any of us need in certain situations. Also pain. …

I eventually change accommodation and occupy a new flat that is an improvement on the first but totally unfurnished. The move is costly for me after surgery expenses. There is no money left with which to furnish two sunlit rooms with a balcony that has tree-fringed villas for company. It is an affluent neighborhood and each family keeps to itself. …

Farmer’s up and down hand-seeding his under-sunned loamy-black furrow-rows fast, but not too so, up, down, down, up, ‘gainy ‘n again; half-day’s gone, good, until. Wha’? Oh—yes, came gripholdy stranglefood von gripholdy stranglefuel! Poppylock, zoot! Uck. Hey there ‘iend. Hey. What? Your down home zero sum patriotical waitstaff compels you, is what. Djinn-strangle Morrey Cooper immediately! Do what? What you …

“Why did we separate?” my son Theo asks. He’s seven years old. “We’re not separated now, right? I’m with you tonight,” I say. “’Today is Monday and l will see you Wednesday, and Friday too.” We’re drawing; we always talk when we draw. I can never get him to talk if I just ask him questions directly. I bought us …

My eyes are like diamonds, finely cut in the mirror. The outlines of my face waver, melting into the cracked walls behind me. My tie represents who I am. Neat, perfectly-strewn, nice. Together. There is no image in my head as I drive through the night. No faces of my dead mother or vanished father, just the recurring voice of …

We’ve all most likely read Franz Kafka’s story about Gregor Samsa turning into a cockroach. We tend to remember the poor young man as he squirmed, legs-up in his bed, worried like all of us from time to time whether or not he was going to be able to get to the labyrinthine confusion of his daily workaday experience. Unlike …

$400,000. SGLI. Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance. Fucking Robbie. I hadn’t even heard he had been killed until I got all the paperwork, forwarded from that years’ old address on the base in Kansas. He had died in Mosul, or somewhere like that. Some kind of explosion. I found his name online in a list of soldiers killed that month, but …

The shadowy figures were looking in on the captive with great interest. There was a mist that was shifting across the room that made the shadows seem all the less distinct. The entire room seemed to be saying perpetually. There was a kind of exhaustion about everything which wouldn’t exactly be defined. It was what it was. And it was …

The old snake made its way around SouthGress. People saw it in several spots on occasion. But among its favorite of spots was the carousel. It would wind around the circle of the carousel’s low metal gate several times and then settle into a sleep as the dawn broke. On the days when the snake curled around the carousel, only …

When shimmering they came, he was hanging over the railing of his second-story balcony. He loved to stand on the balcony watching the sun’s comprehensible inertial descent behind the skyline of Agung Darussalam to the east and Masjid Agung Darussalam to the west. He would smoke his only clove cigarette of the day while he watched that happen. He bought …

This train is a church in both its movements and its congregation. No one dares interrupt the silence. Metal rolling over rusted metal. Outside the scenery passes by like life to a teenager: fleeting but feeling never-ending. Most passengers wish they could be anywhere else to feel anything else, to feel something other than strictly operational. At each stop people …

“Shucks! You shouldn’t have.” “I didn’t. I have no idea who sent ‘em.” “Jeepers! You really don’t care anymore.” “Of course, I do. I keep putting down the toilet lid.” “Gee, Willikers! That’s only been forty years in coming.” “Well, you still fart in your sleep.” “Son of a biscuit, how would you know?” “Haven’t been sleeping too well.” “Sweet …

Silence. Silence is a contagious word, she muses and looks at sea. Warm waves hurry to meet the sun burnt rocks. The gold of the sand shimmers in the glow of the night. Silvery orb of the moon twinkles, one last wink and then ducks behind bales of black cotton. She scribbles on the sand: there is silence in the …

His eyes were clouded with something. It was only on closer inspection that she realized, feeling a pang of something unidentifiable in her chest, that it was tears. His hands were shaking, but he still held the brush with undeniable skill. He dipped it slowly in the paint and brought the blood red tip to the canvas. She watched as …

Ever since St. Bernadette had a vision of Mary in the grotto, tourists came to Lourdes, some to be healed by its miracle. Arriving by train in Lourdes, Roberto alighted onto the streets, now crowded with seekers from across the globe. They came from all over the world, some on crutches, some in wheelchairs, and some even on flat beds. …

Simon began to suspect he was living in a computer simulation. And not only a computer simulation, but a flawed or infected one. This wasn’t just a philosophical idea metastasizing into a neurosis or psychosis. More and more, Simon thought he was detecting seams in the matrix, tiny fractures in the surface of his so-called reality. One morning while shaving, …

Texas heat beats down on the lawn in front of the house. There is a scorching wind gently blowing the blades of inch high grass. The grass is wet green, as if oils soaks through the surface to slicken the grass. The sun’s blaze doesn’t reach the inside of the house. Along with the tarantulas and snakes, it’s stopped at …

We got the call at 5 A.M. My father had woken from a coma after forty-eight hours and asked to see his family. Before he had fallen into the coma, we had brought him home from the hospital. “Take him home and make him comfortable; he doesn’t have long,” the doctor said. We came home and ordered food. For my …

Phil called his penis “Pounder” because it was so heavy it bowed when it was hard. You might say it was Phil’s version of the L’arc de Triomphe. Anyway, after Maxine personally verified the nickname’s namesake, she spread the info all over Bonita. Soon Phil had rep n’ cred, not to be confused with crabs n’ stank, her info on …

Working at home, I decided to take a smoke break. I started a doobie and after what seemed like hours and my coffee smell stale I decided to go out and get a beer. At 7-11, I smelled hotdogs so I got the twofer, it was getting to be lunch time after all. I added some onions some mustard and …

“Hi, Wendell.” I turned my head, tracking the voice past the light blue wall with a seascape print on to the doorway. It was Jared, my dietician. “How are we doing today?” Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a jerk, but I’d been cooped up in the hospital living on their boring food for eleven days and I was sick …

She had had to get out of the hostel at eight in the morning and stay out until eight at night, and that was in the good days, when she still had a hostel to go to. Now she had a dusty alcove off a hallway of a commercial storage firm, where no one yet, knew she slept at night. …

To Mrs. Johnson: Sort of knowing is not knowing but maybe it’s a start. Hazy black grey knowing warm knowing for sure but no knowing what. What’s the time, said the State Trooper who must have stopped you. Must have been it couldn’t have been me because I am asleep, or should be if not then well—nothing that comes out …

“I went up those stairs at my next door neighbor’s party after midnight on New Year’s night to fetch our winter coats. I turned on the light and all the coats were on the floor and Gail was naked under the blankets making it with my next-door neighbor, this guy that ran a bunch of tanning salons. I flicked the …

I’m gonna draw comics, for the prestige. Not for me. But for those all-over guys just like me, for every glimpse of doubt, for that stand-still paralysis and the way those moments can convince you something is missing… And something is always missing. If I can I’ll draw that on paper, because it’s the one thing I might tell myself …

“I wish I could say things are better,” wrote Charlie Anderson, about his wife Callie, “but they’re worse.” The experimental drug for her early onset Alzheimer’s had not worked. “Now it’s like I have no wife. She can’t speak and has a blank look on her face like a dead fish.” I was on his email mailing list and felt …

Do what you love was the message of a self-help book that Sam was reading on his lunch break at Acme Mega Corp. He worked in the sewage billing division, processing invoices for plumbing fixtures and toilet components. Sam was not doing what he loved. Looking up from the book, Sam gazed out the window at the manicured lawn of …

It was a foggy Saturday morning in Middle Georgia and Ray Dan woke up mostly sober, which was a change. Through the window he saw the puddles the rain left in the front yard of his trailer, not that it bothered him. In fact, nothing much ever bothered Ray Dan. But he quickly became bored. He grabbed his cell and …

“The vegetables often leave their stalks. Yes, they go gallivanting about. Yeah, mostly at night. Oh, they are always back on the stalk, or vine, by morning. Why do you ask?” “Couple of veggies been acting up. On the west side of the garden.” “The west side? That’s where the eggplant, the aubergines, grow. And the green beans. Those horrible …

Jack didn’t know why, but over the last year he’d been thinking about that day a lot. It wasn’t a day that had been out of the ordinary. And it wasn’t a day that he could recall that he’d really thought about for more than thirty years. But there it was anyway. Just as it had been for the last …

The meteor shower was spectacular. It was also unexpected. All over the Earth, at least in most places, people were treated to a magnificent fireworks display. Many of these “falling stars” seemed to streak brightly across the heavens clear down to the Earth. For stargazers around the world, it was a show that lasted for several days. Scientists appeared on …

I look around the psychiatrist’s empty waiting room. All chairs. Thin skeletons of chairs linked together at the ankles like prisoners waiting for lunch. At least two dozen of them crammed in here. Surely there must be a couch, if not out here, then back in his office. There’s always a couch. Sometimes they are faux suede, sometimes cloth, and …

“I dream about you a lot these days,” I say to my dad. “And for some reason I show you up in your dreams,” he responds, laughing. It doesn’t feel like I’m dreaming. His voice is clear. The wisps of his grey hair are fine and crisp. I see the individual strands layered on top of each other. I always …

We kidnapped the barber with the stiff neck. I was against the plan but had only one vote. The rest of the guys were in awe of our friend from Princeton. He had a lot of family money in our small suburb. We called him Coney because his head seemed cone headed. His red hair and crew cut accentuated the …

Somebody get me out of here. I have no idea what is happening and if you’re reading this, you’re an American (maybe) and you must, by the law of culture, help me out. We do have only a little control of our lives as we know in our lizard brains that life itself is totally out of control. If any …

We used to lay together on days so hot the hydrants spewed water with firefighter’s blessings and I’d throw off all but my big girl’s panties and feel your holy brown stone on my bare stomach as you cooed the hum of air conditioning units into my soul “Do you mind?” I’d ask, smothering you with chalk till you breathed …

Buick. Nice polish. Oops. My key fell and scratched the paint job. Stupid rich folks. Camera. Burnt orange. Dumb color. Will they notice this new line on their windshield? Asinine Volvo. Fancy Shmancy. Look at that! So many bags from senseless stores. So much money wasted! Oops! I think they now have a slow leak in one of their front …

Jasper was cleaning out a smelly animal pen when he realized that he had a dopey crush on his boss’s daughter. Until this moment he had just assumed he hated Anna less than the girls he went to school with, but now he saw with disgust that he didn’t hate her at all. Her face was stuck in his mind …

In ancient times, I watched the sunset at Mallory Square in Key West. While I gazed at the exquisite, surreal dreamscape that engulfed me, I felt the heat of the glorious sun, my spirit moved by its majestic beauty. But its red sunset drove me mad too. Couldn’t bear the pain and agony of its beauty; couldn’t witness its celestial …

The creek water was milky after a full mornings rain. The song birds singing their tunes in the rising humidity of the afternoon sun. Shelly yawns and stretches her arms up high and looks at me. I can feel her. I’d kiss her again, but I’m afraid. How long before she gets bored and moves on, I wonder? Plenty of …

Melissa disliked it when people at the residential care home call her grandmother “Dearie.” She knew they meant well, but she found the word annoying, condescending-like. So one day she told Grandma how she felt. “There are worse things they can call me,” Grandma said, smiling. “Dearie’s all right. I’ll take it over ‘old bag’ anytime.” Melissa laughed. She was …

Dressed in a black suit and tie, Peter sat at the head of the table. “I’m glad you could make it to dinner.” He picked up a wine glass and gazed to his right. Except for a place setting, no one was there. “A salute to my beautiful wife, Paula.” In a high-pitched voice, ‘Why are we here?’ He cocked …

If these well-worn, war-torn, badly sand beaten, sad looking field boots had a voice, the tales they would tell of scenes they had seen when they once enveloped this grunt’s feet. As I pulled these battered boots from an old forgotten box of Marine Corps memorabilia that I was sifting thru, this duo spoke to me and presented the keys …

King’s Dominion, July 28, 2009, 5:50 PM. Sharp beaver claws and teeth gnawing, grasping; broad flat tails slapping. They walked along on the crowded hot blacktop. What a day we have had here don’t you think? Yes—I’m pooped. Gnaw—gnaw the wood. Must have wood. Must have lots of wood. Find wood. Look—a Fudge and Fun stand. Want to have some? …

“Let’s go into the blue,” was how I invited her to trespass onto the backyard dock. We weren’t prepared for more murk than color over our borrowed sludge lagoon. Sand was as far away as winter and we had splintery wood planks offering our bodies to lake water dragged twice this year already. Sounds of tree services already hacking and …

She lived among sordid squalor, yet she only beheld what enthralled, such as a stray sunray that fleetingly slipped into her darksome room or a moth happily fluttering round half a candle that her little brother was given at church. The key to her tidiness was a bar of soap that she earned from her overtime chores. Having scrubbed myriads …

The alley you’re walking down is dark. It is the back end of many dive bars, illuminated by the opening of back doors as some bartender takes out the garbage. The green of large, metal, rectangular, Industrial Waste Company trash containers lines the route. The smell is rancorous; a revulsion that immediately makes itself apparent. There are oily patches everywhere where …

—Have you seen this before? she said pointing to the white porcelain mug on her desk—no! She wasn’t pointing at the mug, she was referring to the chirographic design enameled around the body, which read: “Woke Mom.” —I have been a mom for fifteen years now, and guess what? It’s not any different from what you are having with Belinda …

The haunted trail was a sexy choice, Owen reflected in study hall. It was a perfect combo of darkness and closeness: make-out city, baby. Not that he was particularly anxious about it. He liked being around Amanda Overstreet; kissing would only be a bonus. In fact, he just plain liked her. That purring voice, man! Those swimmy eyes. Owen grinned …

Roy looks in the mirror. Says “What am I doing with my life?” and feels worried after he says it because he said it reflexively. He’s wearing a red and white shirt. He has short brown hair and a beard. “So how’ve you been,” said Ariel. He reached into his bag and surreptitiously pulled out the answer. “I’ve been good. …

The sea is at low tide, the muddy sands covered in worm casts. You’re walking along by yourself and you see three figures far on the horizon by the distant water’s edge. You try to catch up, but you can’t. You wonder why you’re having trouble walking; you look down and realise why. You’re a swan. You’re in the wrong …

“Why do people always die early?” Marshal Marquette wondered aloud as he and Armando St. Germain sped through the damp, steamy streets of Calais at six AM. “They don’t. They die at night and are discovered in the morning,” St. Germain said, trying to keep a cardboard tray of coffee mugs steady as Marquette took out his frustration on the …

The boy by the window looked out and wondered what was special about the day. It was same as yesterday, identical to any other day. He was prohibited to look out of the window. He thought of how and why such restrictions were imposed on him. In his heart, he knew the truth. His parents didn’t know any better. They …

No one really knew him. He was just a 20-year-old kid who sat in a corner and didn’t speak; another mental case and a mute. When he arrived, one of the psychiatric aides introduced him to me. I said hello and forgot about him immediately. Then the rumors spread. I heard three of them. First, the boy swallowed a bottle …

I’d like to thank God and Long Island and the Dutch for giving me the Hallelujah of naked sunbathing 300 feet above Red Hook with Russian dicks and rooftop fellatio atop century old abandoned warehouses with their apathetic dock workers, black netting condemning the building and freeing our nights to watch the sunrise, to camp out in this cement sanctuary …

Dandy Wharton and his son had put the boat on the trailer and were heading out of the lake. “Dad, I see that frog again!!” “What? Where?” He stopped the car, and the two guys saw a raccoon struggling with gum all over it’s head and paws. The frog hopped off into the water. Peabody had some licorice and a …

Fred was a bully who always bothered Lenny on the way to school. Fred was four years older than Lenny. One day Lenny told him that when he grew up he would kill him. Fred laughed and probably didn’t expect to see Lenny that night, twenty years later, when Lenny waited for him in the alley next to his garage. …

I live in a cage ten stories below Grand Central Station. My master used to lock the cage and disappear for days. He left no food or water. Now, each morning when I wake up, I find food and water and discover he’s left the cage unlocked. What shall I do? Perhaps, he’s poisoned the food and contaminated the water. …

At last, at last, Wendell rests his skis at the other side of the lake in sunset, exhausted, satiated. He senses the water conscious and raucous down under the lake, glaring, straining upward, knocking against the depths of the ice again and again, enraged at his escape. He’s unwilling to look away, but does not want to cross the lake …

The Cherokee son was wondering where to go next when a thundering surge of water hit him full force. Pushed backwards, he was knocked to his knees. Before he could know what hit him, the waters rushed on him again. This time, he fell flat out on his back with waters splashing around to over him, ‘as though I am …

Along the wide, empty street out of town, away from the railroad station, the red storefront gleams. It’s a welcome sight among the plate glass and faded displays of canned beans, motor oil, tools, or decades old sewing patterns, depending on the store. It is also a welcome sight beneath the infinite sky, beside the bay that is just the …

No need to fudge on the details, give them scope. Let them dominate the sketch. For instance, the orange art deco chair and ottoman you found at a flea market. You stopped using them after the termite infestation. The termites have long since fled their porous frames. Insecticide sprayed late destroyed any malingerers. Death comes in many guises. That is …

If inanimate objects could talk, imagine the stories that would be told. When I was going to nursing school to become an RN and avoid starving to death, I bought a 1970 Chrysler. It was 28 years old when I bought it. It was a huge car. It burned a lot of gas and the heater didn’t always work as …

“What we gonna do now?” asked Zim, tugging his elf sleeve. “I dunno.” Nico scratched his pointy ear. “Hide him somewhere?” The two elves stood beside the sleigh in waist-deep snow, considering a headless situation. Icy gales snatched packages and toppled them overboard into the darkness. Panic filled Zim’s frail voice. “We can’t just dump him! This isn’t my fault.” …

The sound of jazz plays in the coffeehouse as I turn the pages of a Philip Roth novel. I look up from the book, hear a young woman’s voice, and feel my heart beat faster. I can’t stop  imagining how it would be to fall in love with her. “Have a good day,” says the barista to a man holding …

Golf on television. What’s up with that? Do you know anyone who plays golf? Here it is, Sunday afternoon, and I have finished my chores, emptied the garbage, cleaned the sink, brushed-out the crapper, and now, when I’m ready to sit down on the couch, there it is: another dumb golf game. I am not knocking golf. Sure, golf is …

I searched for something the least voguish. The location was an embassy though the occasion was only a job interview. London was in verdure with its tree-fringed roads. Sunrays multiplied in my eyes that beamed with joy – my first job interview since I graduated only three months ago. The interviewees hardly noticed my entrance into a very spacious room, …

Is destiny carved or does instinct win out? What causes a species to thrive or thin out? Are queries and theories the puzzles they seem? Let’s hark to a cuckoo tale spun from a dream. There once was a cuckoo who happened to grow into a rare nestling that needed to know about all the whispers and strange twittered words …

I read about it in a free weekly that was delivered in the mail to my apartment, one of those local tabloids comprised of advertisements for tanning salons and burrito vans. At first, I was incredulous. In no way did I believe David Lee Roth would come to Manchester, New Hampshire. But it turned out to be true. He was …

“God,” my grandmother once told me, “what an ugly thing you are!” Before the black-and-white television, (speech forbidden), she jerked, the expression left her eyes… A stray cat, once owned by previous tenants in our block of council flats, its upkeep shared by the remaining occupants, was in the room observing the urinating woman’s tormented memories spiraling into the abyss, …

***URGENT*** AS SOON AS YOU GET THIS MESSAGE, DECODE AND READ IT. THEN DESTROY IT ELECTRONICALLY SO THAT IT CANNOT BE RECOVERED ••• Human beings have shown themselves to be too stupid to govern themselves. They fall for the most outrageous lies and vote for candidates who are clearly unfit to govern. Our movement was started to protect people from …

It’s Tuesday night and the table is full of weeping women, various stages of sex appeal, holding paperback books with the power of the universe coursing through their hands. The throbs of infinite emotion beating in their hearts. They are all on the same page. The same paragraph. Cindy reads every word aloud while everyone else follows along. Her satin …

I saw her again today, following me. As I turned right on the corner, from a left-side glance, I saw the shiny blue of her shirt. First, she waited a few beats, hoping I wouldn’t notice, then continued slyly walking. Why is she following me? What does she want? She’s been following me for years now. I didn’t feel threatened …

The silence was eerie. The darkness was sinister. After his great feat, he had expected joyous celebrations, pompous gifts and that elusive key, his mentor had promised him. He was sure he would get the award of all awards. His mind reassured him that the silence and the darkness were temporary. Therefore, he decided to wait… Losing count of time, …

It was the center of attention in a modest real estate office. I brought it and fixed it without the owner’s permission knowing that it would flatter the flamboyant side of his pretentious character. It was a crystal-like globe with a blue tint that endowed each ray of light that was refracted with the azure of the skies. My intention …

In a world where the oppressors rationalized injustice with the cliche “On both sides,” it was always same shit, different day. Until one day Darth Vader slow-creeped toward Earth in his Death Star and beamed down with his stormtroopers. He came to destroy the planet but morning sex put him in a good mood. “Because I like to be entertained …

After praying all night at the foot of his bed searching for answers to questions that never got answered he decided that today was the day he was finally going to kill himself. After an exhaustive search online of the many and varied ways he could shuffle off this mortal coil. He decided on drowning. The beach was preferable, although …

As I looked out the window, leaves were randomly floating to the ground. It was their destiny from the time they were formed on the trees in the Spring to lie scattered on the lawn this Fall. It had been my destiny to go to war, survive, get married, raise two kids, and become divorced. Now this… My thoughts drifted …

What did Gary Hartnel expect for Pell Grant funded education, the classical intellectualism? For that he would have needed a passport and a time machine. No, these were the days of hurry-up and get a piece of paper and a job days. By 2005, however, learning Latin and Greek, or studying philosophy in the original German, was thought to be …

I never forget summer at our little cottage by the lake. We swam in the mere’s crystal clear water between building our own tree house. My father made a blueprint for a cabin and we spent hours making our high-situated shack. It was almost finished and we couldn’t wait to spend the first night up in a tree with owls …

Seven a.m. in Manhattan, and I have a full week of meetings looming ahead of me. Latte in hand, I take my Hillary Clintonesque navy pantsuit into the dry cleaning shop next to my hotel. “Just a pressing,” I say to the olive-skinned woman behind the counter. She is dressed head to toe in black, a shawl embroidered with threads …

What I heard in my head was William De Vaughn’s “Be Thankful for What You’ve Got.” There wasn’t a diamond in the back. What was actually playing was a loop of the same five rap songs that apparently our driver picked to put him in El Capo/Pimpin’ mode. I could make some under the table paper, let the driver. You …

It returned every night for months and frightened the middle-aged reporter, aspiring novelist blessed and cursed with an uncanny imagination. The haunting dream swept across his unconscious psyche and implanted the eerie seeds of terror in his battered flesh, the pounding and thumping of his heart, the crushing blows of death, profuse sweating mixed with the stench of a thunderous …

“Da-da, do-do, do-da-da.” That’s some good shit, man. You’re shittin’ me. It ain’t worth a shit. It’s all bull-shit. She’s just talkin’ shit. You don’t know shit from Shinola. No shit, Sherlock. Scared the shit out of me! I don’t give a shit. That’s some sorry-ass shit, all right. “Here’s the thing. It sounds low-class. It’s street talk. You’d never …

“Mom are you ready?” I asked. “Yes dear, let’s go.” My mom and I are very excited. Today we are going to meet with our father after a long time. I can’t really explain how happy and excited I am. After a lot of struggle and patience we are getting to meet him. I was thinking what questions I will …

I saw Jadene, my neighbor across the street, take a sledgehammer to her small brick house. She was working on the east side, smacking the red bricks cemented in a row right above the cement pad, cracking bricks and then removing chunks with a small crow bar. I don’t know how long Jadene had been at the task. When I …

My grandma had a strange secret. She could turn into a butterfly. I never knew it—till the age eight. The discovery left me thrilled. My little thin granny, a secret butterfly! That moment is still vivid. It was a warm night. Hot wind blew across the small town buried in the desert that hissed. The lights were out everywhere. The …

For years Milton stood there on my shelf with the sword of St. Michael stuck between ivory pages that are dripping with demonic blood. Yesterday, I picked up the black book of Good and Evil and was resolute to read it thoroughly to better understand the military strategies described in there. I bet Milton displayed great wit. Besides, I always …

The gunsmith placed his latest creation, beautiful with precise, hand-assembled mechanisms and a handle made of rosewood stemming from metal blue, into the display case. It sat unfired, immaculate in oil, in its velvet housing for of weeks until a man came in, admiring the static potential of a gun, then bought it. The man bought the gun for protection …

The gun shop sign, I have to admit, was shimmering. Other than that, it was a piece of shit, but the sun blessed the thing when I drove up. I was armed with statistics. My hands were shaky. I’d wanted to do this for a long time. I knew how many kids kill themselves with guns each year. I had …

It was the kind of night that made you wonder what lurked in the shadows. The wind howled through the trees and leaves swayed from its bluster. The sun should have set for the evening, but a thick layer of blackening clouds extended as far as my eyes could see, making the time seem closer to midnight. The marsh smelled …

Everything began when the larger dog attacked the beagle and drew a six-inch bloody gash across its side. Nick rushed to his dog, picked it up gently and carried it to the porch where the old man sat reading the newspaper. “Can you give me a ride to the vet?” he asked. Before the old man could answer, he added, …

There is only a parking lot now where the Hotel Frasina once stood on the corner, just off the square, in the little town where I grew up. It was first opened in 1893 under the name The Antlers. Then, in 1946, it was purchased by Dominic Frasina. He renamed it Hotel Frasina and remodeled the elegant dining room as …

Mage Allia of House Themis dug her slipper-clad toe into dry soil as she waited for the young girl. She ran a bony, liver-spotted hand over her head and looked up at the Six Houses. They towered above the scattered huts of the forty tribes who clawed this land for sustenance. The Houses stood on towering poles of blue steel, …

Each street has its own imbecile, and such was the case with ours. His name was Vaja, with a stutter that caused him many troubles. Anybody could “pretend to be” Vaja and allow himself to babble everything. Nonetheless, sometimes it is useful to have such poor idiots. Vaja invented the word “Ке-ке”, which means: “someone has died.” One day some …

I’m writing this from Motel Six, where I have been staying for the last three weeks. I have a nice little house in the suburbs but my wife Stella won‘t let me back home. Stella is a good woman even if she’s stuck in the last century. She still has a flip phone, and she won’t have anything to do …

Fall wind bit through William’s threadbare coat producing a shiver. He pulled the coat tightly around his neck to cut off the draft. The coat used to be snug, now it wasn’t. William was somebody in the military, but that was five years back. Since his discharge he hadn’t adjusted well to a noncombat environment. An endless string of temporary …

Yola stepped up front to check the hedges. I slipped the rag from the slit between the seats. It’s the rag she wipes—or should I say swipes?—her mammalian gourds up with eagerly each day’s end, her mammalian gourds meatly, not enormous exactly, but filled to bursting with stuff, call it guts, might as well, or grits, what the hell, or …

The courtly cavalier stood transfixed in a dead silence that echoed the somber stillness of my castle’s cataleptic enchantment.  How could he be the arrant inherent inerrant declarant heir apparent he him hymn nara to my nari narayana duende dawning on she her hurrah it’s my prince charming knight in shining armor amor moribund minus white steed come doyen to …

I was hungover and alone on a Thursday morning in a Las Vegas hotel room and decided to go to a cage fighting gym and do some training. I took a taxi to 4055 West Sunset Road. The gym was full of guys I’d been watching on pay per view and dodgy pirated DVDs. I looked at the schedule and …

I heard him brag, in a speech at work, that he was self made. I was so focused on the beads of sweat dripping down his face that I didn’t think twice about being told to shine the light on him as he speaks. It wasn’t until after my boss walked away, and I saw him slither in, that I …

A scream runs through the street. A young couple sees what they’ll talk about until they’re old: a time, together, when they saw a body on a sidewalk. The couple hold one another and their breaths until police and emergency services arrive. No one offers a “Poor bastard” as those living gather to see where life goes. There’s something about …

It was the summer of 1977. I was on strike. I worked at a soybean processing plant and though I didn’t know it then, it was on the verge of being sold because the owners had made a deal with the buyers that would benefit them both greatly. I had just been divorced and had no savings. I was staying …

“Did you come?” She was quiet, laying there on her back, her eyes closed. I guessed she did. She acted that way. I was just asking. She didn’t answer. I felt stupid asking a second time, but did anyway. “Did you come?” I asked. “Yes! Yes!” she said in an exasperated tone. “I did.” “Sorry,” I said. “Don’t be sorry. …

The love letter is dead. Love letters are not being written anymore. They’re not being lovingly folded, placed in an envelope, and sealed with a kiss. They are not being sent, read, and cherished. There is no reason to anxiously wait for the mail carrier; no need for a length of satin ribbon, fat rubber band, or corded twine. Why? …

Even as a boy, he felt yellow, even just looking at it on a page, his skin heated by its invisible rays. In school he drew suns with fiery light rays shooting off of its surface. “You should draw something else, Colin,” said his teacher Mrs. Lipshitz. “There are trees, grass hills and houses, too.” “I like suns. I draw …

I woke early, shaved, taken a cold shower, then with a glass of fruit juice and some crackers, I occupied my favorite chair before the television. It was to be a twenty–overs cricket match, meaning excitement non-stop. The channel messaged that the match would be televised thirty minutes later because they were wishing a happy Father’s Day to all fathers. …

For years he sought to perform the ultimate illusion. An astounding feat that would captivate audiences. A magic trick like no other which would make them truly appreciate him and win their long overdue praise. The recognition he deserved. Just one fantastic stunt was all he needed. It had eluded him so far, but eventually it would come to him. …

I’ve been shopping at divergent Italian fruit stores in the Milan suburbs: one has sweet Calabrese navel oranges for a euro a kilo, another has Colombian bananas for the same price. We rarely pay any more than a euro a kilo for all fruit and vegetables. Sicilian red oranges are currently 79 cents a kilo, but I sometimes find them …

The Marquis hates rotting away in this cell but has decided to make the best of it. Servants provide rich food, oysters and asparagus tips, and once a week I present myself for him to do as he wishes. For a token sum, I submit to a dozen mice gnawing at my feet or patches of bloodsuckers at my hips. …

What do you have that I might buy for my girl? What do you have that I might buy for my sweetheart? The Mary Kay lady who just rematerialized looked at him with skeletal cheekbones and said, for what seemed to him the ten thousandth time, I told you I told you I told you, I did: I’ve got nothing …

Carmel reached into the mayonnaise jar, hoping to extract a tempting notion. Libi had promised her two friends that by reaching into that vessel, they’d become the immediate owners of germs for fantastic fiction. She had told them that she had stuffed that crock full of slips of paper imprinted with story kernels. All that they had to do for …

1. I don’t remember her name. Let’s call her Sarah. I do remember where she worked: the Kfar Shaul Psychiatric Hospital, as some kind of psychiatric social worker. Like me, she was a new immigrant to Israel, and we both sang in a chamber choir in Jerusalem. “Is it true you’re in a band?” she asked me one evening during …

Oh, roll me over, in the clover, red hot rover, white cliffs of Dover… Yeah, man. Cry me a river, baby. You came alive once, once in a blue moon, Angie, and it hurt me so badly to see your frantic performances on the patio stage as you, demonstrating no talent at all, sought to rely on your physical beauty …

Jeff was seeing her. There was a series of events long before her that led to the male doctor. But first there had been the two musicians. Then they built the group up to three, then it was knocked back down to two and those two went out and conquered the world for a while. Music, that band, was the …

The orange book was an abomination. The people working in the shop left it to work its own way ‘round. Shaliqua saw it on one of the tables Thursday morning. When all surfaces were wiped but that table, she abandoned the task in favor of shining spoons. From behind the counter, with her right eye closed, she held each spoon …

Jesus! What am I doing! Robert thought to himself. It was midday and he was alone in his tiny room with his mind in the salt shaker. He is quite strong. He benches 280 and arm curls 130. He is a writer who just lifts weights for something to do. He has been watching a lot of mixed martial arts …

On sultry August nights I often close my wet-baked eyes and see the old doc and his oval mirror in my mind’s eye. When I taste the sweat pouring down my olive face and inhale the sweltering heat, I remember how this eerie journey began. I met Dr. Jacob Lightman, the eminent psychiatrist and founder of Mirror Image Therapy more …

Maya lifted her chin off of her chest. She rubbed the crusty gunk out of her eyes and coughed, once, to clear her mouth. To her right, her mother lay prone on her hospital bed, a ventilator breathing for her and a seeming myriad of tubes snaking in and out of various ports up and down her body. Instinctively, Maya …

The late morning sky was clear-eyed blue, rich, almost regal. There was no breeze, a soft November, the trees naked of leaves, the sun too bright. “Summer,” one of them muttered. None of them could remember a November this warm. They walked in a small cluster down the center of the street as was their practice: five boys, not a …

My elder brother has an impressive collection of the cacti! More than 300! This was a pleasant discovery. I hardly knew about his strange hobby. Why was the cactus his favorite? I was visiting him after long absence. In fact, I was never invited to his new posh home at Backway Reclamation, the upscale section of Mumbai. This Sunday afternoon, …

I wonder how much time I will have to write, free of the others droning on about how much time I spend without them. How much of my time has been taken from them to serve my fingers and thoughts with no regard for their feelings and desires? This is the constant bicker of the three spouses that I could …

Marvin called time and temperature many times during the week. He felt he needed to hear another human voice and too often he felt the recording was a real person talking only to him. Then one beautiful Thursday morning, he dialed the number and the voice said, “Marvin, get outside. It’s a beautiful day. Just beautiful. Go to the park, …

Bobo inherited the corporation from his father, becoming the principal shareholder and chairman of the board of directors. His first executive action was to have a meeting with the management team to brainstorm new ideas for the budget. “I think we should invest more in long term infrastructure,” said Manager #9. “A review of current tax liabilities and implications would …

I once was, we once were, ordinary people, like you. Being together we have become one mind. I am sorry if our writing is clumsy. We don’t speak, write or use words any longer. Our thoughts are felt by each other before we have them. The ideas of I and we aren’t as clear as they may be for you, …

My limbs move with an awkward, reflexive motion. I speak in a mechanical, colorless tone. My body is composed primarily of plastic and stainless steel. Most people assume that I am a robot. They are wrong. I am an electronic person. I once was a live human being. Toward the end of my life, an electronic copy of my brain …

It may sound simple enough to go to your father’s house for Christmas dinner, but the fact is for me it wasn’t. I have tried over and over again to figure out what happens. I start out filled with the resolve to act natural— just be myself— talk to Father as though he were anyone else. But it’s always the …

When I watch television, I hardly ever listen to commercials. About 99% of the time, I mute them out, with the exception of the guy that does the Mexican beer commercials about the world’s most interesting man, but that’s not the commercial that I want to write about. Back in 2012, I muted a commercial as soon as the station went …

‘Well, when you put “I” in the story, it doesn’t mean it’s about you?’ Harrison asked in an empty bar in Red Hook. ‘How’s that?’ Jameson asked. Harrison repeated the question. ‘No,’ Jameson said, ‘because it’s a fiction piece, even if it’s based on something that’s true.’ ‘That gives you a chance to twist it around a little bit, huh?’ …

I met Mr. Pereira one foggy morning. The building where he stayed was a long walk from mine; the icy wind constantly brushed against my cheeks and chest as I walked down the dimly lit pavement. When I finally reached the building, I couldn’t see it as it had slipped behind a thick blanket of fog. I hesitated for a …

DO NOT DISTURB hung from the outside doorknob. She was a schoolmarm who couldn’t resist a good-looking referee, tall and built. The morning after the game. Seedy motel room. The smell of stale cigarettes clinging to the walls. His striped black and white jersey and trousers lay crumpled up on the floor next to the bed. “Get up!” She slid …

On the day of her mother’s book launch, Harriet Sparks unlocked her second self. This was convenient because she had previously cancelled an important date, in fact a romantic date with a boy, so as not to disappoint her mother. While she didn’t care much for her mother’s free verse she cared deeply about their relationship, and so she would …

It’s 2042 and I’m eighty years old. I was born in 1961. I’ve seen a lot in my eighty years and I’d like to talk about or tell you about how things are different now than they were back then. How things have changed since the seventies, the eighties and nineties, the two thousands up to 2022. August 8, 2022 …

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.” ~ William Shakespeare Hijacked by the wind, dropped down towards earth like a used lead condom a winter twig – unwraps her skeleton – unzips her buds. Bare, shameless, transmuted, a first-fruit offering, quiet–still-glad, on a rutted asphalt altar. Waiting – like a seed to be planted. Listening- for the prophecy of spring. …

Peter Styles checked and double-checked his messages. She was going through with it. Patricia Styles, his sister-in-law, was putting her psychic wares on the market. She had listed them in an ad posted online and shared across her networks. Everything must go! Peter had been asked by Patricia to an advance showing in the event that he happened to like …

Shyness is climbing a circling staircase. Shyness isn’t stasis, paralysis, paranoiac fear of leaving the house, venereal disease, fire ants, or rain storms. Shyness isn’t cabin fever. Shyness is ambling along beneath cloudless weather and noticing the same buildings the same houses. Again. Again. The dead lay down. The terribly shy keep walking. The staircase leads beyond the passages beyond, …

He is crouching on the grass behind a bush, out of wind. Only a few feet away he hears the growling of a tiger. He holds his breath until his lungs almost burst, cautiously letting the air seep out of his lungs. The tiger lingers, but then seems to stroll away. It doesn’t matter what we call this being. He …

The light turned green and I pressed softly on the accelerator. The beginnings of a post-rainstorm sunset sat painted the sky above the streets we’ve both driven on for years. The only difference between the nights in this town is the way the sun decides to disappear. He turned to me. “My mom’s really been on me to spend more …

Willow Heights is a lovely neighborhood where many of us know one another. During the pandemic many folks bought dogs, whose fondest desires were to trot around the block with their owners. Around 3PM, the school kids pass through my back yard. Fine with me. Do parents still wait for their children and give them milk and Oreos? I certainly …

I believe God is a woman. Why do I think God is a woman? The creator of all living things? I think it happened after the accident (I’ll get to that later on). For the longest time I tried to understand my own purpose. I used to look up at the stars and feel somehow I was in the wrong …

Gary Samson slammed the door behind him. He was upset and in pain as a result of what just happened. Stepping off the sidewalk in front of the building, he hustled to his car. Flinging the door open, he turned on the radio and looked in the rear view mirror. The reflection caused tears to run down his cheeks. Never …

We first wanted to start a wedding band. This is where I met Scott Howard. He was a fat guy playing keyboard across from me in a Manhattan rehearsal studio. The next week I had him over at my house. I watched him wobble up the walkway. We lived in a place called the Butcher’s Co-op on Midwood Street, Brooklyn. …

An excerpt from Sleeping Beauty One day like all seemingly other days a long impending day that was to be set apart from all other days by the opening of an impenetrable chasm I idle found myself in medias res wandering wandering intrepidly all about the palace running round running running round about the castle restlessly questing searching aimlessly for …

I walked into a very strange looking room. There were bright lights everywhere and all I could make out of the room was that it was very huge. I asked myself why I wasn’t blinded by the bright lights. Then all of a sudden, I felt something on my face as soon as I thought of that. Sunglasses appeared on …

One day a twenty-something white woman was walking down a sidewalk, in the suburbs, when she bumped into an elderly black man. She was startled because this man was walking the biggest Rottweiler anyone has ever seen. “What a big dog!” the white woman said. “What’s his name?” The man then tied the dog to a tree and told him …

Walter Nye would overcome his shyness towards his lover Kristin. After his eventual first date they became a great couple. Collecting comments from street gossip about their togetherness. Walter would talk of nothing else. Kristen this. Kristen that. Until all his friends deserted him. But Walter didn’t care. Nor hardly realize. All he wanted and needed was Kristin. As time …

Look at me. Four days later. The black and blue marks only get denser and that arm of mine. “Go to the doctor,” everyone tells me. “You might have a torn rotator cuff.” It’s the arm that’s the worse. When I got home from the competitive swim, with Band-Aids on my feet, I couldn’t move my right arm. Although I …

1 Back in the 1950s, when Brooklyn Tech was an all-boys high school, I volunteered for the post of lunchroom table captain. Little did I know that this post would ultimately change my life. We sat in rows of five or six tables in a huge room. About thirty of us sat in each row. We would pass along our …

For dad, and his wild heart. Once when we were children, our father kidnapped us from our mother to take us across the desert. His wood-paneled station wagon roared through El Paso, New Mexico, and Arizona. I played with my prize toy, an E.T. plush, in the back of that car under a white sheet. In school I had been …

Tonight would be special. I would be allowed to stay up an hour past my bedtime. There would be punch and cookies with the grownups. Music and dancing would make the living room and mother’s face look happy. The sounds of a party were beginning to drift upstairs. My older sister and I combed and fluffed in white pinafores, sat …

Once there was a young woman named Tira. She had moved all over the island of Java. She was founding her salty fish perfume kingdom to support her dream of becoming a lecturer. But two mighty winds always assaulted the hot air balloon she traveled in. The first wind was peer pressure. It would swing her into karaoke bars. It …

David McConnell didn’t realize how tense he’d been until the train left German soil and entered Austria. In a few hours he’d be in Vienna and he and Julia would shop for a cleric. He let out a sigh and looked up from his week-old edition of the London Times. Sitting across from him was a large man with a …

The cloud from Danielle’s vape enveloped the inside of her car like a Saharan sandstorm. Passers-by suspected her vehicle was in flames but instead of calling the emergency services they took a selfie, pinged it on WhatsApp, captioned it Car on fire lol and went on their way. Danielle applied another nicotine patch, sucked on her vape until she felt …

The thing he missed most was the sound of birdsong. After the change, you no longer heard birds. You might see birds high in the sky, now and again, far from humans, as if too frightened to come near. But you didn’t hear them. You couldn’t hear anything. There was a ringing that droned in his ears but he wasn’t …

Dr Selby Leigh had never been very happy, despite his successes in life. It was a Saturday, sun out and birds singing, that he stopped by the village café on his way to work. Any day before this it would have been routine procedure. Order a coffee, chit chat a bit with the wait staff while paying and tipping, browse …

Once upon a once upon a time time time I gave up on my life—that is I gave up all the things that make life worth living. Like hoping, wanting, wishing—in fact I gave up as many feelings as I could get rid of. Strange how that works. You decide—only semi-awarely—to stop feeling pain. You put up a wall—invisible, impenetrable—surrounding …

We’d cop 40s from the mafia front on Smith and Union (the one on the corner, not the bodega next to the pizza joint—they’d just laugh at our fakes and tell us to try across the street) and run down President till we hit the water. “Take the F to Carroll and walk to the river,” we’d tell anyone who …

Through the sliding doors she came one hip at a time: the most beautiful woman he had seen in his life. It is a strange thing to suddenly find the most beautiful woman you have seen in your life. If you know this, then you are in rare company. Furthermore, you know exactly the feeling, and you do not doubt …

Her hands hurt. With great effort she whipped them. Born in the family of enforcers, she was destined to live cruelly and punish offenders. The queue of little labours persevered with their burdens, sometimes their backs broke with the weight. She would strike the poor creatures until they shrieked in action. With the advent of winters, she became brutal. There …

“It was an Appelt.” “Huh?” “Its sale covered the fees for: the hall, my dress, and the caterer.” “Not parsing.” “I found it when cleaning out my grandma’s storage room.” “?” “I was looking for vintage and found expensive art.” “So?” “You and I took Art Appreciation, together, sophomore year.” “We also toked together and we each also slept, without …

Frankie Mann operated a small, Brooklyn music office. He often hired a junkie sax player named Freddie. Frankie’s father, Mambo, was a gangster down in Florida. He financed Frankie as a front. He also used a fat singer named Peter Vallone, who told jokes, usually with an Italian accent. Now Doctor Frankel stared kindly at Brown. Frankel sat erect in …

She closed the door and, through the peep hole, watched him walk down the hall to the elevator as his semen leaked from between her legs and pooled in her underpants. As soon as he had disappeared from sight, she pressed her forehead against the door and began to quietly cry. From behind her came a familiar voice. “I thought …

I think most people called him the Wizard. To me he was just a monster because there was no way that a guy that keeps an 18-year-old girl in a shed for 23 hours a day was going to win kindest person of the year. Although the shed had a window so it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Who …

After prayers for small town dreams, miniature struggles for good grades to play sports before graduating to find someone to get caught up in a wedding proposal so ladies in room 39 can tally praises or prayer requests, Janice speaks wearing the elbow chub of Sunday school authority, “And now we can see there’s a new face with us today.” …

This is true. There were three of them. They lived down the street on the opposite corner – father, mother, daughter. They lived in the suburbs and their daughter grew up. Her name was Mary. Mary Beth, really, but the boys in the neighborhood shortened it. This seems ironic now, because her name had a mere three syllables. We were …

I’ve always been overeager, so when Summit.org started advertising that they could make you live forever, I was one of the first to sign up. It cost a lot of money, but I had it. I was getting on in years. and I knew I couldn’t take it with me. The first session lasted all afternoon. They wired this thing …

“There’s a French word for the expressions Manet paints on his models. Gayua’s anomie. There is no more moral constraint. And why not? The liberte, equalite and fraternite of 1793 has dissolved all social conventions into pulp. They’re now called pretentions. Modernists are all around us. Manet understood the exhaustion of life that has made us nothing more than stunned …

He knew most of the people who had been killed. Except for one guy who was known for his piss poor treatment of anyone that crossed his path, Terry could think of no explanation for most of the murders. It seemed to be senseless. People run over by cars, stabbed, shot, or strangled. Old lady Johnson, who was a happy …

Wildman stood on the soapbox on the corner crying out words from the great handwritten book open in his arms before him; he had worked writing the book for weeks on end, he had planned this day carefully. Hair flying atop his tossing head, he stood screaming. —blanket is fuzzy is flannel is called a comforter, not a quilt or …

The Reedman house had been empty since the old man died. He and his wife June fell in love with it when it was part of Land Tract No. 19. He continued with his welding job, a strong man with a stubbly beard helping build ships at the Navy Yard. Then June starting coughing. The walls of their bungalow rang …

The weirdness finally wears off when there’s only five minutes remaining. It takes the dregs of my limited self control to stop myself from jumping off the nutter couch and pointing triumphantly at Laura and shouting ‘Ha!’ I don’t move. But my face must have. Because she pauses in the middle of her sentence. “You wanted to say something?” she …

“You see, there’s always an increase in stake and a gap and a back up against the wall. Now, look…” He flicked his cigarette. “No matter how much you write, you want more.” Lilly was just listening. Herb was in one of his moods. “It was cool, so clever, the way that thing just arrived in me.” Herb lit another …

The stairs are blocked by steel rails; I can’t access them from this side. She’s told me my keys are down below, where the party was. I remember being surrounded by women for a brief instant. I’d shouted — something I don’t remember. She’s caught the trolley off to work. This little English town, asleep, and asleep. In bed she’d …

My first born of two sons died nine years ago. It was the day after Easter Sunday and the month prior to his 18th birthday. Without warning and within moments our lives were unequivocally altered. We were pummeled to our knees, bloodied and broken by the happenstances of life. He died within 20 feet of his father and I… horrific …

James was sitting in a lawn chair in the garage having a beer watching Becky’s two-year-old draw with chalk on the driveway. Not the way he planned on spending his Saturday afternoon, but with the washing machine broken, the kid’s mother had to go to the laundromat. “She could’ve taken him,” his buddy on the phone said. “No kidding; she …

(novel excerpt from EXECUTIVES OF THE WORLD) Ben, Jr. was standing beneath the arched doorway of the Cactus Room in full bullfighter regalia—a little surprised to see his older brother Will (older by a year) dressed in matching costume pouring drinks for regulars at the bar.  (Ben, Jr. had gotten wind of Will’s protest to the “Tres Amigos” stunt–and Will’s …

She was a poet. She lived alone and often caught her muse by walking the streets of the city she called home. Her friends cautioned her. “You need to watch out, Lily. The creeps are out there. Drug dealers, pimps, and a hundred different kinds of deviants. You’re no match for any of them.” Lily understood. She was a tiny …

Reid was optimistic. The latest sales forecast located his zone in improved prosperity. Other leading economic indicators, too, looked rosy. There was a sharp increase in building permits in his region. As well, the dollar exchange rate had climbed, and unemployment claims had dropped. Whereas Reid wasn’t yet ready to invite Deidra to sample Champaign in his apartment, he was …

The shortcut to Steven’s house was about two blocks from the train station. Every day he walked on one of two train tracks. He could smell the home cooked meal his sister had bragged about two hours earlier. When he saw the train coming towards him, he took a step to the left and easily reached the other track. He …

There was no getting around it anymore—Annie’s stomach had become a definite protuberance. The problem seemed to be her fondness for food. Still, Annie was not devoid of the tendency toward self-evaluation. Browsing through the fashion-filled pages of Damsel magazine, she had become aware of another hunger experienced when studying the color portraits of lean, hollow-eyed models, accompanied by a …

Midday bartending is witnessing drinkers begin, then see them end before your night even starts. Ending shift drinks are something to hold to, same as a nurse in aged green scrubs holds to her deep yellow beer. She daydreams, day drinks, and has for two hours. She’s looked towards me but far into her own past. Or into what happens …

The storm had passed by the time that dawn came. Wind fluttered into the back porch from over the lake. It had been a long journey from the other side of the continent but they would need to make it back soon. But before that could happen there would be kind of a long journey in and of itself and …

It’s snowing brass under orange lamppost night, shrapnel, the slow motion petals of an exploding Eden. Somewhere out there Mommy’s feet work like pendulums; a kind of guided meditation to see her through the cold and the dark and the poor that, like her, will do anything to take care of their own. Anything. Still, “He’s safe,” she tells her …

There are lots of ways to get fired. Take today, for example—a call from dispatch that I should attend a nine o-clock meeting. And it’s Friday. I’m not talking about reasons for getting canned—just the methodology, the setup, the protocol. But I’m observant, notice I didn’t say smart, just observant. I watched a year ago in dispatch when Bob S. …

Above the decorative bells, mounted within the steeple of the Lutheran church, a pair of loud speakers blare a recording of bells. The ringing falls from its rafters like shattered glass on pavement. Parishioners mill around, wearing polite smiles that match their Sunday best. Mouths move, heads nod, but no one can hear the other. As long as nothing is …

Dude, like around 8? No, maybe like 9, in the morning, I ate three blotters. I’ve done Lucy a bunch of times, but I forreal hadn’t done ‘em like that early or whatever. My friends and I found a connection on ‘em a few weeks earlier, so we’d been taking a few hits every weekend or whatever. But that day, …

The velvet summer sky hovers above the forgotten suburban street light, the orange glow lighting the car like a blazing chariot from the inner depths of hell; hitting the sharp curves at seventy, side streets calling our name, just whispering all the depraved pleasures the night has yet to offer in our half deaf ringing ears. Now up to seventy …

The flyers up around the gayborhood didn’t say much: no date, no time, and no location. They just say VOTE: A NEW GAY DANCE CLUB – COMING SOON. It’s rumored to be inspired by Studio 54 back in its heyday—you know, when the bouncer handpicked the hot and important people outside the club. The address everyone is passing around is …

Three blondwood, circular tables joined together for the writing group. She had arrived earlier. The tables faced two large plate glass windows that faced out on the street. What you saw right outside the window, across 7th Avenue, were green-lit neon letters that spelled, PITA. He had two coffees in front of him. She said, “Is that your system?” She …

I’m awake, I’m awake—I only look asleep because I am in the daily trance of waiting for the mailman; I’m sitting on the front couch with a cold coming on. But my mood is good—the mailman will come. She will— When the mailman comes, it will just be wonderful! Who knows what she will bring what it can be what …

You know the waiting as well as I do. You hate it too. The terrible waiting. The time you dread more than a five-foot needle stuck in your backside. You feel the rage. You work harder than hell for some decent medical insurance only to wait like a flea-bitten dog for a miserable bone. Waiting in line to fill out …

Hey nearly tripped up tripped down tripped over but bu b—got back on’em okay. Much the wiser. After talking it down over with my waitress we got outta’ ‘dere again. So, talkdown over much more productive than talk down all over. All over; from head to toe front to back inside to outside every cubic anything. As; all over; no …

You might think I’m a fan of Henry David Thoreau because I’m building a cabin away from everything in the woods in northern Maine. But I have a different reason for wanting to get away. I started working at the Dalton Corp right after I graduated from high school twelve years ago. It used to be a good company to …

When your father’s angry, his mustache bristles. Words fire fusillades. You’re too weak, what good is art, you need to fuck around, use people, don’t trust anyone. When he’s in a good mood, he proclaims you his light. You build walls of mendacities. First you make up fictitious girlfriends, prestigious fake awards, even fake fistfights. You add bloody detail for …

I got a radio call early one morning to relieve another deputy at the site of a small plane crash in an area called Bermuda Dunes. The night shift deputy was finishing his report when I arrived on the scene. All I had to do was wait for an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Bureau to arrive from Los …

In the morning I woke up knowing that I was absolutely broke, but it was necessary to have a drink. Very urgent. A matter of life and death. I got up, thanking God it was not necessary to dress because yesterday I fell asleep fully clothed. Outside it was very cold and my zipper was broken. I almost froze my …

Peck, peck, peck, I wake in bed and open my eyes, Peck, peck, peck. What’s that noise? I listen, peck, peck, peck, it sounds like someone is tapping on my bedroom window. I shift upwards to my elbows, Peck, peck, peck. I clamber out of bed and stand in the middle of my dark bedroom, breathing hard. If I scream, …

Ice chunks flew at people dashing prematurely into the ring. A worried woman shielded her face as icy, Roman artillery pellets flashed around heads as the crowd chanted, “Sons of bitches. Sons of bitches…” A New Zealander looked on and said, “A crowd of heroes.” Entering the ring safely to avoid paying to sit in the stands was taboo. A …

Once upon a time, Barry woke up in his dark room, where the smell of the unknown floats like a river of riddles and the soul of the world goes round and round within four walls of an unborn light. He was oblivious to the dream. How did he wake up? What was the unfathomable mystery that unhinged such a …

In a theatrical afterlife, the shades take over the performance halls, while post-pandemic audiences move into the limbo of the virtual.  When the theater is dark, critics and reviewers have nothing to report. A Drama Reviewer’s pages remain blank; there is nothing to review when nothing is viewed. Reviewer is unemployed, like the actors, directors, designers and stage hands. He …

As the two women approached the cemetery, June said, “Hey, this sign here says No Trespassing, No Digging, No Rubbers. It looks like, around here, rubbers are banned from cemeteries.” “I know lots of guys who’ve left rubbers in cemeteries. Don’t worry about it.” Janette said. Looking at her, June said, “I’m pretty sure that’s not what the sign means.” Unfazed, …

Lee wrote a poem every day. Sometimes two. He’d done that since he was fifteen. Now he was sixty-seven years old and retired. Friday night, he decided to walk to a small bar that had a monthly poetry reading. Lee had been to absolutely no readings, so he wasn’t sure if he would like what he saw. Inside, there was …

Hi, my name’s Arch and I live inside. I’m inside him, Eddie. I come out at night while he’s sleeping. Out of Eddie’s anus I crawl. Like a nocturnal form of tapeworm, only I go exploring at night. But I’m no worm. I’m small, that’s for sure. Small enough to live inside him and crawl out of his asshole every night. …

It should be required for everyone to get trashed underage, and at least once a month overage. Nothing quite like talking to random people that you won’t give a shit about the next day. And there’d nothing quite like being best friends with them for 52 minutes. There’s your world peace! The wells are only $2.00, and we’re all poor …

Well, I’d say I’ve done fairly well in this hardball game of life we all come to naked and crying. I’ve got two great grown kids—Sarah and Mark—who seem sane and happy, I’ve got my loving wife Mary of thirty years, I’ve got my two story home in suburban north Dallas, and a job with Grace Insurance that I’ve long …

The first time I met White Feather was in the ER. I was an RN on the psyche floor of our hospital. I was a floor nurse, working the Special Care Unit, or the “locked side,” as we called it. I was often asked to come down to ER to help with patients that were combative, for whatever reason, including …

“Dos horas,” their mother said before rolling up the windows and sitting in the music of air conditioning and radio. Bass shook their peeled back window little league football numbers. The Lopez brothers breathed on reflex as they walked into the volunteer fire department. Voting, city meetings concerning softball field noise violations, and courses on how to give life to …

The mascot for the Apopka Spuds baseball team was helping the team prepare for the season opener. The hated Zellwood Zephyr was in town. Irwin “Sport” Cotes, a twelve-year-old fan, was the mascot for the upcoming 1905 season. He functioned as the batboy, errand boy, and did whatever was asked of him. Team manager Hiram “Ducky” Dooley took roll call …

Mr L.K.J. Portland was in shock. He couldn’t put his finger of what he’d done wrong. Well, to be truthful, he had done wrong—he’d taken an illegal turn and collided with an old car driven by a young woman. A nobody. That was what troubled Mr. Portland. The nobody was but a fly yet she stood her ground when he …

In the small backyard surrounding my parents’ crumbling house that might be foreclosed in a week, mother wishes we could be the pallbearers for the Weber grill that is rusted to shit and falling apart, to relocate it out of the walking path, and since the five foot chiminea is in the way, to relocate that as well. “Let’s do …

I couldn’t get rid of the vendor on line 1, there was a call still hanging on line 2, I was ten minutes late for a conference call from Tokyo, and the senior VP was tapping his foot in my doorway. Worse, I had just spilled a four-dollar latte on my white Ralph Lauren skirt. “Just a minute!” I shouted …

I will not judge. Except for One Who was not there. Crammed into wagons. Doors closed. Left in darkness until arriving at this place—not unlike the other places except this one with unpainted wood instead of concrete. Rows of us stacked upon rows barricaded inside stockades with more rows cobbled onto more rows. Outside and away from the bare wood …

I watched a bird jump from the side of a building, rising for a moment with a gentle arc, like some fucked-up angel dust fiend; then beginning to move up and forward less and less, then downward more and more, beginning to flap its wings that angel dust fiends do not have, and flying away. And I wonder What did …

The geniuses had the maintenance guy, Walker, spray painting the ceiling. And they had me assist. Walker had on white coveralls, I was in my regular street clothes: flannel shirt, walking shorts. When I requested coveralls from Rodrigo, he and Walker were quick to shake their heads. “You won’t need any. Besides, we’re out.” Like I said: It’s a pathetic …

Shit. They called him Shit. Sometimes, while he ate alone at his lunch table, Karl Bennett and his two toadies would walk across the cafeteria and stop at his table. Karl would lean over, the tip of his nose almost touching Shit’s face. “Hey, Shit!” Karl would say, turning his head and flashing a white-toothed All-American smile at the girls …