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I sang about Ruffa, the beautiful girl who fell ill after her boyfriend betrayed her. I saw her weak and dying in her bed, and I saw her mother by her side. I saw her boyfriend who refused to visit her because he’d met another. I saw Ruffa in her bed and I put it into my head that the poor thing would survive, if only I could make it to the last lines of the refrain. I didn’t care about the mountain that jutted out in front of me like a bad tooth, or the steep path I had
» Continue reading Kladnisa Mountain Air by Zdravka Evtimova…
After our second drink, light trickled from the tunnel. There were arrivals. A troupe of girls poured in, their fashions vintage—dresses and hairstyles from the forties. Gift boxes were placed on perimeter tables.
“A theme party,” I said. “Should we leave?”
The bartender shook his head and laughed. “They won’t see you.”
He started making cherry Cokes and Shirley Temples. He was right: we were invisible to teenage girls, we were over thirty. I downed my third Mustang.
Two women stood on chairs and hung a banner: HAPPY SWEET SIXTEEN.
The girls hushed, formed a half-circle
» Continue reading 16 by Gary Moshimer…
Listen to a reading of “Smalling” by Nick Stokes.
The numbers on the alarm clock are too large. You need two hands to hold the coffee mug. You can’t pee over the toilet’s lip while standing. Pee puddles warmly on the linoleum. You can’t pick up your children to kiss them good morning and when you walk them to the bus stop it takes an unforgivable number of steps. As you re-enter your house through the dog door you remember that your children giggled as they swung you between them and after you almost fell there was a strange comfort
» Continue reading Smalling by Nick Stokes…
Mae lies next to Howard and watches spores move over his face, into his mouth, and worm under his eyelids. He doesn’t wake, not even when delicate flowerettes bleed from the sheets and up the walls. A light breeze, and shapes vanish, then grow again in stillness, vine across the ceiling and out the door, down the hallway to the boys’ room, where they climb the ladder of their bunk bed in hues of ochre. In daylight, the boys zombie-walk, wild-haired and sleepy, their freckles connected by a lattice of golden mould. Howard’s skin is target practice for ringworm
» Continue reading Not just fungus by Laura M. Gibson…
1 Rowena notes that the garage could be used as a garage and not a storage shed with a remote-controlled door. It does make sense. There are two cars here all the time now. One of them could be frost free all winter long. Next winter. If we still use cars in the future. One cool spring Saturday morning, I stand alone in the gravel driveway, wearing a dust mask and safety glasses; bucket, six-pack, and various cleaning implements in one hand; remote clicker in the other. Press the button, LED flashes. Door squeals up. 2 How did
» Continue reading Some Stuff by Jason Newport…
And so I left on a motorcycle I’d pawned off some perv at the club who’d told me he’d give it to me if I’d beat on some fella inside, which I did, – and I left New York to try again. But, older now, I only had enough juice and fear to make it a third of the way down Route 90 before I crumpled in a shitty motel off the freeway outside of Chicago, and, that night, and for so many after, I knew I’d gotten what I’d I wanted all along. I found an apartment with a
» Continue reading Go! by Peter Jang…
Listen to a reading of “Russian Women Stuff” by Leesa Cross-Smith.
After Charlie and I broke up, he dated two Russian women. When we got back together, I said something to him about how he wore those same camouflage pants all of the time, the same paint-splattered white v-neck shirts. What I meant was: don’t think I’ve forgotten that I told you I thought Russian women were beautiful and that if I was a lesbian I’d want to fall in love with one. Charlie shrugged and said he didn’t have any other shirts so I said let’s go buy you
» Continue reading Russian Women Stuff by Leesa Cross-Smith…
December in Berlin and the girls taste of glühwein and rolled cigarettes. I fix a poinsettia to her hair. She fingers the velvet and runs out into Friedrichstrasse. I follow. The night cusps on her shoulder and we see the last rain of the year turn into the first snow. I bring her home, parcelled up on a budget flight. She sleeps in my bed, a comma. I wrap myself around punctuation. At breakfast, we eat duck eggs and cake. We begin dinner with dessert. On the second last day, she says she wishes to see the sea
» Continue reading Maelstrom by Deirdre Daly…
Listen to a reading of “Buzzard” by Ben Drinen.
I coasted down the dirt road on my piece of shit dirt bike. The dirt road was brown. The pebbles in the dust made my bike bounce. There was a little hill by the dirt road. It was mostly dirt and rocks. There was some scrub brush growing here and there. I looked up at the sky. I saw the remnants of a fading jet stream. I saw some movement in the scrub brush. I hit the footbrakes. I skidded in a circle. I approached the bush cautiously. Behind the
» Continue reading Buzzard by Ben Drinen…
Listen to a reading of “Out at Shellmound” by William Lusk Coppage.
Before Grandpa died he showed me his scars from fighting demons, then how he’d wrestled one—jumping up and down like the congregation over in Itta Bena when the spirit washes over them. “They almost got me good,” he said, holding his arms out. His wrists chewed up from their teeth. “I got away but they’ll be back. They’re coming back for you.” He made me fear those demons in a way that if I ever saw them, I would have the courage to fight back. The night
» Continue reading Out at Shellmound by William Lusk Coppage…
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