by Stacia Levy “I’m sorry about my late paper, Professor Friedlander,” the sweet young student said. She stood in front of my office desk, woolen scarf wound around her neck although it was a warm spring day. “My printer broke down.” “Uh-huh.” I was singularly unimpressed. I’d heard the my-printer-ate-my-paper…
by Taylor Banuchie It’s time. I’m prostrate before a glowing figure, so spectacularly bright that my eyes combust, merely ashes now in my fire-pit sockets. I reach out in supplication, and Ascendance reaches back. Our fingertips touch, and we disappear into each other. I don’t miss my eyes because I…
by James Ryan No one shall be forgotten who was great in this world. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling Hot it was, wincing hot. Just another radiator-bubbling August afternoon for the drivers of southwest Missouri. But not for me, a thin-blooded, pale-faced Bronxite from New York City. I felt the…
by John R. Murray The worst thing about arriving at the food coalition’s kitchen was getting one of the other volunteers to come downstairs to let me in. It was on the second floor of a church on a busy corner of Pico Boulevard, and even though the kitchen windows…
by Olaf Kroneman I feed the starving. I feed the dying. I’m no Mother Teresa, but the act of feeding the unfortunates who can’t eat appeals to me. How could you not like the person who feeds you? You don’t bite the hand. I feed people, patients, whose stomachs are…
by Gloria Holsinger Sassyfras swiftly dug up the ginseng roots with well-practiced hands, then placed them in the burlap sack she always carried on such missions. All the while she kept her ears perked for unusual sounds in the forest. She pushed her wild, strawberry blonde hair away from her…
by Marc Mayer Okay, I admit it…I’m a hoarder. No, I don’t mean one of those nutjobs you see on the TV news being led out of their hopelessly cluttered—with boxes of shit from the 1950s—home along with their thirty-two cats and eighteen dogs. I’m just your average “I never…
by Joseph Mills Even after Dale reaches the bleachers and Jackie has started stretching on the field, Sally and the boys are still in the van. Doing something. God knows what. It’s why Dale hates it when she drives. She get in and sits there, adjusting her seat, getting out…
by Nancy Ford Dugan I was showing my driver’s license to my mother to prove I was her daughter when I looked out the window and saw two guys maneuvering a body with a plaid sheet over its face into an SUV. “Don’t be silly. You’re not Sally,” said my…
by Kim Venkataraman “Another bite of mashed potato?” “No, but I’ll have a bit more of the stew.” “Is it tasty?” I lift the spoon slowly, my hand cupped underneath. “The beef is tough as a boot but the broth is good.” I’m lying on the daybed on the…