By Patricia Smith Daylight arrived like a long-overdue visitor. Chris had been awake for hours, listening to the sound of her husband Michael’s steady breathing. Before the day ended, she would become a part of history. Mother Nature, seeming to understand the importance of this day, responded with a brilliant array…
By Donna Broom Father Louis Demarco was surprised to see a little girl in the third pew. It was 4:15 pm; his turn to say 5 o’clock mass at St. Gabriel’s church. The adjoining Catholic school dismissed at 2:10, so it was unusual to see a lone child in the…
By Todd Howard Two weeks ago, on Friday, Frankie’s ma made pasta e fagioli. Well, she calls it Pasta Fazool. Frankie told me that’s a Southern Italy Brooklyn thing. It’s soup with white kidney beans, pasta, greens, and some other stuff—like lots of garlic. Anyway, Frankie’s mom is the best…
By Leonard Henry Scott His head was twice the size of a normal head and his eyes starred out at two widely separated points in space, as if they were the eyes of a fish or of two completely different people. The right one was lower on his face than…
By Kale Meyer These days I find myself thinking back to the summer just before my dad left for good. I guess the old memories make the house seem less empty than it is. I try to fill my head with the pleasant ones. Of me running through the hallways…
By Deborah Foster In a private care facility in the mountains, there resided one who seemed to everyone to be off her rocker, but all is not what it seems. She was a diminutive lady who always wore her snowy white hair in a bun on top of her head….
By James Cato I met the Tooth Fairy at a bar-club called Revolution. I sat alone with an IPA, letting the bitterness pinch my cheeks and heeding the cartoonish scene of three college kids dancing to a pulsing beat on an otherwise empty floor. In the opposite corner, a floating…
By Aubrie Arnold The husband and wife stood outside the multi-storied glass and steel building staring at the revolving front door. The weather was chilly and wet, and they huddled inside their long winter coats—navy blue for her and heather grey for him that matched a small portion of his thinning…
By Amory Cutting The deep winter months were weeping with their crystal sorrow and for a moment’s respite from toiling life I sought desperately to borrow a vision of blithe from the bright and boisterous television screen, I was now settling down in the living room and I breathed in…
By Emily Graham It was after midnight when he came calling. The rattle of his knock on my metal screen door woke me. I was dressed lightly. Even at night, it had been sweltering in the little house. Randall Clem Casey was standing on my front porch, his hands thrust…