Poetry
The Wolfman Goes Gray by Noel Sloboda
Narrated by Fred Haag No longer, he fears, will villagers tremble at his devil’s hour howls when they see how the night has begun to bleed from his coat. The barkeep sloshes more well whiskey into his bowl trying to console the creature: at least he isn’t losing hair like so many his age. But as [...]
Poetry
Year of the Fire Rooster by Deborah Wong
Narrated by John C. Mannone I feel trapped like ginseng in a venti jar, Chinese dates losing its battle to circulate the warring blood of my ancestors. Mother fails to re-construct facial collagen with bird nests. Cordyceps are searching for new host to procreate. You can never be good enough for the Fire Rooster. I [...]
Poetry
Narrated by Jennifer Crow Our shadows settle deeper on the world because of the glow in the sky; ozone haze sparks our senses, and we gather in whispering knots where doorways and narrow alleys offer shelter from that piercing radiance. Who called these monstrous beings out of the heavens, who beckoned them to the fragile [...]
Poetry
The Narrows by Jamie Elliott Keith
You thought you fell beyond the pale of sharp-edged sun-washed color into sepia’s vale, weighted, down a well of mud-stained dolor, struck by muffled knell, funereal bells that wring the sound of sorrows from every aching cell, there compelled on end to dwell in all your long tomorrows. And in a turn, who could tell [...]
Poetry
Grandma Mary’s Mirror Ann Thornfield-Long
Narrated by Ann Thornfield-Long Mary’s heavy-beveled mirror hoarded the corner of the dining room where Inmans gathered on the farm the family came from miles around to mourn her she died from a spider bite on her arm. In the dining room where Inmans gathered on the farm at Grandma Mary’s house with her vintage [...]
Poetry
Narrated by Cheryl Heineman After a Ellie Harold’s painting, “Birds Fly In” They seem raven-like, dark-winged, moving toward a tangled nest or like crows circling, seeking their own kind against a fog-ivory sky, the outline interleaved with comings and goings birds-eye cries flybys of brush-wings odors [...]
Fiction
Applecheeks, Hostetler, and Bellezecca by Scott Bryan Wilson
Bellazecca had taken to working at his kitchen table on a little portable typewriter, his poems in a stack on the checkered tablecloth. He could sit there and look out the big picture window for inspiration, or when he needed to mull over word choice, syntax, metaphor, line break. He would have breakfast sitting on [...]
Fiction
The trees stood like a teal castle wall, against the dark backdrop of blue-grey mountains to the west. Indeed, the darkness was a fitting setting for Freedom, but with time, I grew confused with the possibility of light. For there were times in my own life, more frequent of late, that I weighed the consequences [...]
Fiction
I Would Go To Hell For You by Surya Vaidyanathan
Few people know about the door to Hell on the second floor of the university library, right behind the Rare Books Collection, near the door that leads to the Archives. Most of the time, it’s a closet door for the janitor. But it becomes something else if you know what you are looking for. I [...]
Fiction
As soon as Magda got off the plane, she checked on grandad’s ashes. It didn’t matter that she’d done it several times on the flight to Warsaw. Magda needed to know they were still with her, that she could carry something so important without anything going wrong. When her backpack went through airport security, she [...]
Fiction
The Dark, The Dark by David Barber
Before Frank’s madness took hold, each town he raided got marked on an old Esso map with a pencil cross, or in red biro if it should be avoided, or an R if the place was worth a second look. There were other letters, but he didn’t remember what they meant now he wasn’t mentally [...]
Fiction
When You Come to Venice by Sandra Glaze
I have been told that you hesitate to come to Venice, so I am writing to you to dispel some of the evil things you may have heard said of my pisans — yes, pisans because Venice is more of a village than a city. Most people hurry through in a few hours, they see [...]