Fiction
Intro to Feb 2021 Fiction by Edwin Riddell
Thanks to all contributors for another bravura issue. We had submissions from as far apart as Alaska and Tasmania. Unconsciously or subconsciously (I never know which is which), there seemed to be several echoes of the Covid pandemic in this season’s submissions. Perhaps these are reflected in the number of stories involving metamorphosis of one [...]
Fiction
Ava Montgomery pushes hard to force her front door open wide enough to get inside, just managing to squeeze in through the small gap. The door clicks closed. Inside everything is in shadows cast by the moonlight. Black binbags bulge behind the door like squat toads piled one atop the other. Easing herself past them, [...]
Fiction
Silver Linings to Mushroom Clouds by Kevin J. Binder
If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s that I’m an optimist. Some might even call me naïve, and I’m ok with that. I know who I am, I don’t try to be anyone I’m not, and sometimes I’m rewarded for it. About an hour after both our phones had gotten the “BALLISTIC MISSILE [...]
Fiction
The Ultimate Tour by Anne Sherman
5:30 pm “Please come in. We’re so happy to have you for the tour. Watch that third step up to the porch. It’s broken. One of the owners thinks the place needs to look dilapidated though I keep arguing that the house is not what our guests come to see. After all, we don’t deal [...]
Fiction
A Strange Encounter by Matthew Damron
It all started on that icy dock in Sitka. I was standing on the bow of our fishing boat, watching our other deckhand, Barry, come running down the ramp with a duffel bag slung across his shoulder. We should have left the harbor an hour earlier and our captain, Elias, was visibly impatient. He sat [...]
Fiction
“A black hole is this really cool thing in outer space,” Jaxson said. “See, stuff falls into the hole. And the more stuff, the bigger the hole gets. Eventually it’s so big, everything has to fall in. Even light.” Trevor didn’t understand this. “Yeah,” he said. “So we’re gonna make one.” “How?” Jaxson turned away [...]
Fiction
Jimmy Cruz, twenty stories below the Transnational Hotel Central Park, stands before SB 101. He cracks open the unlocked lead-lined door. “Is everything all right in there?” Jimmy’s voice is calm and reassuring. He’s a natural people person who should be working full time at the front desk instead of being the go-to guy for [...]
Poetry
An Ode to Shade by Ann Thornfield-Long
Narrated by John C. Mannone I cannot shed my casing by scouring my skin against a rock like a snake. If I cannot escape my own skin, how can I dress in yours? I am itching to know the mystery, how it feels to be behind your glasses. I want to sleep tight in [...]
Poetry
State Change by Aaron Sandberg
Narrated by Aaron Sanberg The last time I hold her, she melts. Pools of her flow from my shoulders to hips. Puddles of what she was splash where I step. Goodbye, I whisper, but her ears are all water. I’m sorry, I whisper, and maybe she hears. Her cries are just ripples. She replies [...]
Poetry
We Can’t Touch by Anne Carly Abad
You like it when I whisper your name during the long nothings of space but I have to yell this time. The thread of our connection that once transcended the vacuum feels like gossamer against my imagined skin. Are we old or are we getting there? Where, where, you ask— there where the other worlds [...]
Poetry
Narrated by Heather A. Davis I hear them whisper about us. I see my momma I hear her accent and I know that some people don’t like where she comes from. She sits at the table with her coffee and with that sadness in her eyes she thinks I don’t see. [...]
Poetry
Forgiveness by Ananya Chatterjee
Narrated by Ananya Chatterjee Even dragonflies tiptoe through a sea of subdued green It is strange how forgiveness comes so easily now. Now that the air stands still reluctant to blow. A night of wakeful wantonness: all those hours of urgent loving, of promises as shimmery as their celestial witness. And then the blow, [...]
Poetry
Narrated by Ngô Binh Anh Khoa I soar amid the clouds Enveloped by roaring winds That soothe and caress the flesh Behind my chipped scales As my blood aflames with life. I furl my old wings, Feel the pull of gravity as gentle as my mother’s Embrace welcoming me home. I hear the air [...]
Poetry
Narrated by Bill Ratner After Matthew Dickman When you see it up ahead in the road standing there, looking right at you—a wild buffalo dead ahead—you’re going to want to floor it, pedal to the metal. But in the opposite lane a semi’s coming at you, so about your only hope is speed/swerve/evade. As [...]
Poetry
The Complete Works of Thales and Miletus by Mark J. Mitchell
His feet stayed damp all day. The slow, long walk up river, town spreading out. Two lodestones gripped tight. He tried wrapping them in dry stalks from above the banks. The rocks clicked. Alone, they meant nothing, but they wanted to talk to each other. Still damp. He cursed all gods, any of them. He [...]