by Chanchal Kumar Sometimes, everything begins to fascinate me:The slow passage of nightacross the sky, the blur of traffic,the snare of my smartphone. What I want is a way out of presentness. I want to leave & hope to keep going—tho I don’t know if I want to get out of bedto do that.
by Michael K. White At first all I heard were rumors. Someone told me that Snuggy Latka had died, and if that wasn’t shocking enough, apparently he died in jail. When I heard this my first reaction was the instant and insistent urge to piss. Like all of a sudden…
by David Stillwagon Jody tossed her plastic bag of clothes over her shoulder like Santa Claus and headed across the darkened city. The only sound was the echo of cars passing by and an occasional voice piercing the silence. The night air was cool, getting cooler after each step. She…
by Bill Foley The last time Walt peed in the bed, Brenda’s pajamas were the collateral damage. “Walt, wake up!” she whispered. “Are you wearing your Depends?” “Huh?” he grumbled. “Oh my God, not again.” Now shouting disgust and frustration, Brenda ran into the bathroom, pulled off her pajamas, and…
by Thomas Weedman You see the sea of mourners bundled in black fill the small Mission Basilica for the evening wake. Extended family and familiar faces, A to Zed, flow from the past like shivery spindrift. You pray not all of them come though, not him. Not again. Please, not…
by Annh Browder My mama always said that flies were the first sign that something had died. When autumn came and our garden would die, flies would soon follow. They would lay their eggs in the dead plants’ husks, and, eventually, those eggs would hatch. I would often watch them…
by Angela Townsend If Lana knows that people underestimate her, she does not show it. She shows up to committee meetings with freshly purpled hair. It is not intended to be subtle or ironic, qualities that search in vain for a place to touch down in Lana. Big birds have…
by Allan Deligi Tom wasn’t the kind of man people noticed—not in a good way, anyway. He moved through life like a shadow, a worn figure. His once-thick, vibrant-red hair had receded into a few pale, wiry strands that clung stubbornly to his scalp. His ears stuck out too far,…
by Rebecca Ponichtera Two long weeks have passed since the young girl’s parents first admitted her to the crumbling hospital in the center of the city. Like her own waning heart, the sanitarium hopelessly continues to beat against the expanding reach of death as it captures one broken street at…
by Rachel Lawrence Godfrey *This story contains sensitive content.* As twenty-five-year-old Nancy Godfrey headed into her first pregnancy’s twenty-three-week embryonic scan, she was giddy with excitement while apprehensive about the procedure. The ten-week ultrasound image looked like a Jelly-Belly candy. Her husband Patrick had nicknamed it Jelly-Baby. This scan though,…
by Karly Tomasi My dream that night was darker than black, something more vast and fluid. As I swam through the dark, a tinge of restless sleep curdled my vision of inky smoothness, but I couldn’t wake the sleeping raven beside me, so I simply ignored the discomfort. I let…