DATING AND NON-EXISTENCE By DJ Swykert I would rather buy something than sell anything. So it was natural I hated pitching my book to an audience. But I have become accustomed to certain luxuries the affluence designing weapons of mass destruction has afforded me. I absolved the building of these weapons by writing The General … [Read more…]
LAKE BEULAH By Anthony Roesch In Lakeland, most mothers warn their children to keep away from the lakes. Sink holes and pancaking, cottonmouths and alligators, just to name a few reasons. But my mother. Unlike most. Didn’t care. Lake Beulah, punchbowl and reedy, sometimes coffee-colored, sometimes gunmetal gray, notorious for swamp gators and cat drownings, … [Read more…]
TRAIN By Jill Stukenberg I imagine her emerging from the house to a bright day. Keys, wallet, coffee mug in hand—and the sun like lighting for a surgery. Eyelids fluttering, pupils shrieking with shrink, her gaze would have escaped to the black bulk of the train engine parked behind the shed. By then it had … [Read more…]
PEDESTAL By Kelly Magee We put her on a pedestal, a real nice one, not some cheap, plastic shit, but something comfortable—not marble, it was too cold, and not concrete, that was too hard—an ergonomic pedestal made of responsibly harvested bamboo and recycled bike tires. It stood ten feet off the ground and had an … [Read more…]
HARD FREEZE By James Claffey We get the 15B bus to town on Saturday morning. Mam has her shopping bag and the list she wrote out after breakfast. The Old Man is staying home by the fire, afraid to get a chill in his gammy leg. Before we leave I put a shovel of slack … [Read more…]