The Worker riffles through the pages of his black binder, going through the motions of preparing for his next meeting. After a moment, bored, he claps the binder shut. No need to bother with this sort of thing anymore. Success like his has its rewards. He stands quietly in the center of his immense office—his sanctuary—each detail of which he has personally chosen. Bright and … Continue reading Walls by Caroline Tilley
His daughter, Penny, perches on the piano stool, delivering an exegesis on being dissociative as the father sits calmly on the cat-clawed leather chair, gob-smacked. Fortunately, this ramble only comes occasionally, but when she starts, he sinks into the worn black leather until he is one with the fabric. Penny has been erratic since the summer before college. This included arguments that ended with the … Continue reading A Morning by Mike Lee
“We’ll fall into a chaos.” Renee’s tone is mundane, like ordering breakfast at a diner. I should not have gotten drunk with her, knowing the psychotropic medications she is prescribed and how ineffective they become under the influence, and how fucking crazy she gets. Yet she was buying, and I am cheap. The fields of regret expanded as the effects of the scotches I drank … Continue reading Theater by Mike Lee
On the cold blister of a dead, broken highway walked the spectral blurs of three figures. A minuscule speck of dim light glowed from the center of the group. Ethereal beings? Perhaps…once upon a long ago time. Now just three individuals looking for a hot meal and a dry bed. The light itself felt like a memory, was nothing but a feeble tin lantern to guide their way, … Continue reading Three Strangers by Josiah Golojuh
He got me with The Thin Man. But first he had to get my attention. It wasn’t tough. Colin had all the equipment: pearl-gray eyes, fauxhawk hair and a deft way of embedding words like “soporific” and “inculcate” in that vermouth-over-ice voice of his. I’d come to the bar as a refugee from a recent breakup. So had he. We found our way to a … Continue reading Thin Man Binge by Steven Fromm
It was with a pep in his step that Robert Quinlan, a recently retired corporate attorney hailed in his firm’s parting tribute for, among other fine qualities, his “unfailing courtliness,” emerged one bright autumn morning from a 66th Street medical building. Here he was, the brand-new recipient of a cardiologist’s clean bill of health, which followed last week’s thumbs up from his general practitioner, and on … Continue reading The Office of the Presidency by Michael Tilley
I don’t know. Can you drink enough coffee to keep properly alert all night just staring at a fresh dead body? Listening for the slightest sound? That most delicate twitch of the lips. A finger twitch. We do it, but come morning, who can remember if they’ve managed to stay fully awake enough to do the job? There’s always that chance you’ve drifted off and … Continue reading A New Sittin’ Up by Larry D. Thacker
Perhaps because so few people care about the publishing world outside of, well, the publishing world, there aren’t nearly enough “taking the ‘literature business’ to task” movies (instead, there are plenty of “taking the movie business to task” offerings [see: Sunset Boulevard, Singin’ in the Rain, The Player, Barton Fink, Adaptation, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Babylon, among others]). Though it could be quite a … Continue reading One-Two Punch: American Fiction and The Other Black Girl Lampoon the Publishing Industry for Its Views on What a “Black” Book Is
Mark, Phillip and Greg had been out of school just two weeks, but were already immersed in the intoxication of summer. In seven years, they would be part of the 1985 graduating class of Indian Hills High School but that was a lifetime away. The dread of starting sixth grade would hit them maybe around mid-August but, for now, their freedom was unbounded. The weather … Continue reading Summer Spell by Garvin Livingston
You know what’s worse than a family dinner? I’ll tell you: a fucking wedding dinner. Every random relative that you’ve ever encountered once, three millenniums ago, and whose existences are perfectly inconsequential to you but apparently primordial to the familial circle, reunited in the same room. Annoyance grated me as I observed people, whose blood was the only thing we had in common, hypocritically saluting … Continue reading Family Matters by Sarah Siham
