By Alan Gartenhaus The thud sent me racing to look out windows closed tightly against frosty north winds. Abandoning my homework, I bolted into the evening’s dark without stopping for a coat. Tire tracks in a fresh dusting of snow led to a car smashed against an oak tree on…
By Michelle Guevara
By Jenn Bouchard I hadn’t thought about my ex-girlfriend in years. Now Clara – or Cee, as I called her – was sitting across from me at Cannonball, my restaurant in the River North neighborhood of Chicago. She was there because I had totally messed up her life about two…
by J D Francis Woodrow Franklin sat resting, slowly pushing back and forth on an old, wooden bench swing that hung from a rusty chain on the front porch of the tiny cottage. It is where he has lived for thirty-seven years, alone. The bench squeaked and moaned with every…
by Lisa L. Lynn In Derrick’s younger years as a baker, women and pastry were somehow all of the same dreamlike confection, heady with sugar, alternately cloying and sublime. They were so indelibly coupled that he had often tasted women as rich layers of butter and salt, almond and fruit,…
by Katie Stavick 8:05 a.m. I shut off the alarm and lay in my bed, contemplating calling in sick. I mean, seriously, what’s the point? I already submitted my notice, which sucked. “It’s not that we don’t like you or think you could handle the job. We know you could. But the person we…
by Helena Fools I live on his horizon, roughly75.5 miles from eastern Madisonto my Milwaukee locationnow that he’s bought the highestpowered binoculars on the marketthere are times when he could bewatching me had those expensivelenses been pointed in the rightdirection instead of witnessingconstellations’ perpetuallypummelling down innocent,independently falling stars he tends…
by Sarah Ockershausen Delp The table is set for company. The florescent shine off the faucet is deafening. She’ll teeter in, whisking the tiles in tiny steps. Click clacking in her vintage heels as soon as the bell ting-tings on the oven. I’m cooking inside. It smells of rosemary and thyme, roasted…
by Amanda Lightner My mother called one gray February morning. “Hi, Mom. What’s up?” Pinching the phone between my ear and shoulder, I scraped cereal from my son’s bib. “Mom? You there?” She cleared her throat. “Yes. Yes, I’m here. Sorry to call so early, but I have a favor…
by Beth Bayley The snowplow in summer is a tragic thing,unable to fulfill its purpose,unhooked from the truck and left to rust and dustand maybe shelter some mice.In the winter, its gimlet eye and yawing jaw save the day,the sound of it scraping a driveway super-heroic.But in the summer, it’s…