by Zoe Donaldson• Comments Closed
For James R. Donaldson III Your face flashes in the road when I cross nonesuch river. What a stupid name, we might have said—one thought, our own. Your dust makes me patient, quiet, but I want something better. The scar crawled from navel to neck, an almost straight sliver, a thin snake stuck in your...
by Billy O’Callaghan• Comments Closed
After so long, and so much effort, they decided, without discussing the matter, to give up trying. This made life easier, if a little more empty. Margaret took up sewing; James became more serious about his reading, with vague intentions of perhaps writing something himself at some distant point in the future. Their apartment was...
by Maury Feinsilber• Comments Closed
He was too busy being ten years old to notice that his mom had left her brushes immersed in the jar. They sat there, in the sunlight, in the little glassed-in side porch that was her studio, the turpentine slowly evaporating and leaving rings inside the jar the color of pennies left long in the...
by Peter Levine• Comments Closed
He is in the airport. Palm Springs. He’s finished a golf weekend with a buddy who was getting married. They were all old friends from school, and they’d had a time. He’s sitting outside on a small patio having a beer, reading the USA Today they left for him in the hotel room, and he...
by Peter Stenson• Comments Closed
You may know me as the E-Trader Baby—the phenom that is the stock-talking infant from the commercials—but the name’s Thurman Hendricks. I know, Thurman. Thanks, Dad, like, sorry I turned out white and not linebacker-sized. But whatever, play the hand you’re dealt. And that’s what I keep telling myself lately, play the hand you’re dealt....
by John Matthew Fox• Comments Closed
Every morning on the way to his mother’s, Flanners drove past the local church. It was an old one, designated as a landmark because of the bell tower, and attended on Sundays by a few elderly parishioners who sputtered up in tank-like sedans. Flanners had never attended. He got everything he needed from the rectangular...
by Paul Zimmerman• Comments Closed
My friend Alan asked me to kill his father. He was joking, sort of. There’s 200,000 already in an offshore account, he told me. He was smiling. Laughing. Joking, clearly. His father was a bad man. The rest of the family had been in litigation against him for a long time. Legal fees were running...
by Laura Jean Baker• Comments Closed
The first time Leo died before my eyes, he was two months old. I dropped him on a sidewalk in downtown Milwaukee as I exited a restaurant, the first consequential faltering of my lifetime. Holding a juice drink, clutching Leo between my forearm and chest, I missed a step, tossed the cup, and fell forward,...
by Lara Egger• Comments Closed
In this, my life
the back and forth
the running of yellow lights
beneath the snarky grey sky
of morning
by James K. Zimmerman• Comments Closed
so when A & E woke up one brilliant morning
in The Garden it dawned on them that they were
naked and they were hot and in shape but E
said not on our first date so they bought some
by Jacqueline Kolosov• Comments Closed
Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also—Luke 2:34-35
The neighborhood gun shop squats beside Daybreak Donuts,
and on the other side, Gifts of Genuine Leather
blinks in pink neon. Above the morning traffic,
by Jim Papa• Comments Closed
Some want love, and some to live again
the worn rosaries of the past.
But I want to sleep with the wood duck
among the rustling reeds,
