The young G, with no light in her eyes and her mouth without any smile, was dead inside because of life. She was feeling the weight of her body in each step, dragging herself on the dirty concrete and holding her heart in her hands. Life gave her the most precious gift she could ever expect but we know how life is. Life is like … Continue reading The Young G Dead Inside by Laura Mega
With the unsaid said, the family skeletons sit smouldering, shadows fused to the sofa. The echoes of afterthoughts stain the air, taste of petrol. * (then) the smoky sting of the whisky brings back that winter I bought my first bottle of Jack Daniel’s Mum thought I was turning into an alcoholic. Everything had already fallen apart. Dad was on Prozac, Mark was stitched and … Continue reading Molotov by David Barnes
It was a truly gorgeous Saturday morning in Washington, D.C., and as the day wore on the sky would be veined with the rainbow collisions of clouds and light against blue. By 7 a.m., homeless men sat on the steps below the blunt-tipped, somehow incomplete statue in front of Union Station, debating the relative virtues of various hustles. By 8 a.m., a spinning zoetrope of … Continue reading Season of the Clown by David Z. Morris
I sat at your feet and watched your labored breathing nervously. A minnow waiting for the worm to twitch. And when the last one drew in and creaked out I heard the rattle unravel. The sound of a hose meant to pump water finding air for the first time. A snake and its final effort to let the offender know that it is serious. There … Continue reading A Suffocating Expanse of Sky by Andrew Fenstermaker
Down south, you get used to the wait. Waiting on the funeral procession to pass before getting back on the road. Waiting on harvest season, on the Opry to reinstate Hank, on the bank to take the farm. Waiting at the Superdome for Katrina’s black water to cede and the clear bottled water to arrive – that took a bit. Seemed those folks had to … Continue reading On Katrina: But Evangeline is Not the Only One Who Has Waited Here in Disappointment* by Scott McDaniel
I have never ridden to hounds; I never expect to ride to hounds―none of my family has ever ridden to hounds and none of them― My father, before he ever was my father, once fell in love with a Swiss girl, but, I guess she didn’t want to leave Switzerland. Who would? It affected my father quite badly, you see, but he eventually recovered. It … Continue reading January by Joseph Buehler
Even Dali could not have conveyed onto canvas the flickering shadows and lights, the way they played desperately across the under side of the pool cover. He might, however, have been able to interpret the mind of the young boy trapped beneath it, legs tangled skin-cutting tight in the submerged water volleyball net. He might have understood the terrified, blood-stricken eyes, wide and bulging with … Continue reading Voyeur by Ryan Stovall
There is a panhandler who wanders the subways of midtown – I call him the Bitter Giant. He’s at least six feet and six inches tall, easily three hundred pounds, darkly and thickly bearded – he might be Sephardic, or Persian, or Greek. Regardless, he is the rare New York panhandler who has not learned to use empathy or hope to his advantage. He dresses … Continue reading The Bitter Giant of Midtown by David Z. Morris
