Fiction

Our Last Game (Steve S. Saroff)

The last time I saw John Bruce Shoemaker, he came to my house at 10 p.m. and asked me to go play pool at Charlie’s. the writer, I had been in the yard, watching the summer sky turn dark. My two children were sleeping, and my wife, standing next to me, said, “It’s okay. Go…

Odds (Joel Tomfohr)

Odds are they won’t read this. Everyone won’t read this. I write a poem about how there is nothing wrong with me. Everyone won’t read that either. I write a poem about how nothing is wrong and about how I have a wife, and our daughter is due in spring. Maybe it will be raining…

Hey, or what I kept in the drafts outside the Wynn Las Vegas (Kirsti MacKenzie)

Drunk out of their minds, these two. We’re all in line for cabs at four in the morning outside this big fancy resort and they stand out not only because they are very fucked up, but because of the larger parties, a bachelor and a bachelorette, and there is a kind of Capulet-Montague thing happening,…

When I Meet God (Sam Berman)

7:04AM: I’m dreaming about dreaming when Lucy wakes me with a big kiss on my nose, my cheeks, my chin, too. Lucy’s walleyed and her tail cuts the sun that pours in from the window that faces the airport. 7:14AM: On the morning radio, while the coffee drips, a woman explains that “Identity is a billion-dollar…

How It Goes (Patrick G. Roland)

We’re in the back of a casino eating veggie burgers when she says things always work out for her. She didn’t even apply to grad school, a friend mentioned her name and they offered a full scholarship. Doctors said she’d never have kids. She tried twice and got a boy and a girl. When she…

Open Up and Say Markowitz (Leo Vartorella)

Only the second quarter and it’s already a blowout. Dad holds the last bite of a salami sandwich between his index finger and thumb like the end of a joint, or someone doing the World’s Smallest Violin bit. We have been silent long enough that my voice surprises us both. Kind of odd how he…

Old Woman and the Girls (Ivy Grimes)

Old Woman cut the girls’ hair every month and gathered up the dead fluff to make pillows. There was plenty of fabric left, rolls of stars, stripes, polka dots.  “We’ll run out before the fabric does,” she told herself while sewing. The girls were still too young to know they were going to die. What…

Gun Heaven (Ryan Bradford)

A gun floats up to heaven because it died. Shot to death, a tragedy. Turns out there’s a Gun Heaven, which is actually real heaven because guns just made up Human Heaven to make humans feel less scared about dying. As expected, the god of Gun Heaven is a big gun. Like, a really big…

Dead Things (Chris Reed)

Dead things were appearing on Kent’s windowsill. The first few days it was two dead bugs, or three. He noticed them when he turned on his bedside lamp against the predawn darkness. He squinted at the tiny black things and knelt to take a closer look. The bugs lay upside-down beneath his bedroom window. An…

Birth Mom (Addison Zeller)

My birth mom can’t meet me at the airport, but if I Uber to Bank of America she’ll be out front in a puffy winter coat. The crocuses are open.   I only recognize her eyes—same as mine. I stand at the window of her SUV and listen. She needs money. She won’t ask outright. I…

Truth & Answers & Beauty & Magic & An Idea (Aaron Burch)

My buddy, DT, texts me and our other buddy, Kevin, that he has an idea. I have an idea, he texts. I like ideas. I stare at the message. I stare at my phone.  Either DT is waiting for Kevin or I to ask what the idea is, or he’s in the middle of typing…

Academic Conference (Andrew Bertaina)

He’d been thinking of the conference in England for a long time. Not because of the subject matter, Victorian Literature, which he’d been teaching for too long and now found boring, but because there was a woman going to the conference with whom he thought he might have a chance of making love. They’d exchanged…

The Monkey King (Tyler Plofker)

The Monkey King is the king of the monkeys. He rules over seventeen monkeys. The monkeys are real fast. Walk into their kingdom and they will steal your valuables before you realize there’s even a monkey. They will steal your valuables and bring them to the Monkey King. The kingdom is made up of sticks…

French Girl Chic (Chris L. Terry)

The perfect shoes were finally on sale. He ordered them while standing over his bathroom sink. In the time it took the shoes to arrive, a windowpane popped from a decaying frame, one cabinet knob dropped half an inch lower than its mate, and the kitchen floor grew filthy. He thought about what to wear…

Now it’s nothing but flowers (Anna Vangala Jones)

I know I’m her ghost. The one that lingers in the corners of her memory, waiting to strike—when some song by Bruce Springsteen plays, or when she drives by our old favorite diner, or when it rains and she remembers us stuck in the gym at school waiting for the worst of Hurricane Floyd to…

The Spirit of the Salad Bar (Lucy Biederman)

At the Whole Foods in Clarendon, there was a loft with some tables and chairs where I often sat looking down on shoppers roaming the salad bar. I had heard a report on NPR that said you should get a lot of toppings at a salad bar. Stuff like nuts, cheese, and dried fruit, all…

Rottwild (Cora Lee)

Chopper was the bitch who started it all. She lay on the ground in front of me, her sagging belly crowned with thick leathery nipples. When she rolled over, I could see all six of them lined up, poking through her black fur like tombstones. Around us, her descendants filled the yard, nipping at each…

Meep (Ash Wu)

She stood outside the East Broadway Mall in Chinatown, rubbing her T-zone. The weather agitated her eczema and left dry flakes across the spots the sun touched frequently: the nub of skin between her eyebrows, her cheeks, the top of her nose. She licked the tip of her index finger and kept rubbing, trying to…

Monster (Kevin Sterne)

Jerry pretends he’s his dead mother. He wears her dress shoes and marches around the house slamming cabinets. He drinks coffee from mugs and smokes cigarettes until he coughs into the garbage. What should I make for dinner? he asks the microwave. The kids are sick and I’m sick. Jerry eats ice cream from the…

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