Fiction
Introduction to Issue 35 Fiction by Guest Editor Shahid Khan
Summer is over. Autumn is here. Soon the dark, icy grasp of Winter will come. If that doesn’t fill you with unease, perhaps these stories will.
Fiction
A Dream of a Good Life by Benjamin Ghan
“Say this city has ten million souls, Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.” ~W.H. Auden 05/31/2350 There were statues down here on the edge of the bay, starving grotesque figures that looked up at the lake, [...]
Fiction
There are four souls going to hell on the schedule and nowhere to fit them in this damn cab.
Fiction
Icarus, Unbound by Benjamin Miller
Bright night, Collier sleeps on the dark slope of Malapert, the thrush sings. Under an ethereal oak tree, he watches his ankles slip into the white waves of the sand. The shaking branches push the winged from its perch. “When ours come for me once again,” whistles the thrush before flight, “let them stay, leave [...]
Fiction
Signal for Meirion by David Rees-Thomas
Meirion pulls the furry, polyester lined helmet off, and chugs a deep lungful of fresh air. The wind blows cool against his damp, sweating face, and he places the giant bear head on a bench, before sitting next to it, resting his elbows on his knees. Cheese. Every year. Ye olde medieval cheese fayre. Most [...]
Fiction
For as Many Dawns by Lindsey Duncan
It is a strange thing to know the death of my people saved this world. I do not know how long it has been. I cannot count time since the moon came weeping down to our graves. I still feel the lunar cycle in my breast, but I cannot reckon it into human days. During [...]
Fiction
You are nine years old. You stick your head out your bedroom window and take it all in: the sharp bite that edges the wind—hints of cinnamon and rotten leaves at the back of your tongue—the trees that have shed their leaves like a woman discarding her party dress when the evening is done, leaving [...]
Poetry
Before the Beginning by Megan Denese Mealor
Narrated by Megan Denese Mealor God without Eve: watercolor wanderlust a blizzard stoked with stones She smoothed in vicious strokes of sea lit reclusive hillsides with bellflowers and begonias etched herself at awestruck angles tangled Adam's warring bones slept forgotten in the mosses climbed and climbed forbidden skies Serpents sweetened and riddled deafening star-stunned sparrows [...]
Poetry
Prehistoric Strigiformes by Patricia Hope
Narrated by Patricia Hope Darkness descends on Earth. Only a quarter moon, a million stars light the way for nocturnes. The bird flies in stealth skimming above bush and bog— wingspan, ten feet side-to-side. It turns its head halfway around, hears, sees, hones in on one rodent running, desperate to hide. Sees, even from one [...]
Poetry
Hills Like Bone Elephants by Wesley D. Gray
Narrated by Wesley D. Gray There are hills like bone elephants cresting across a feverish pink skyline in pallid waves, and river veins like desiccated fingers, erratic like the crow tracks of feral lightning that ran through your bloodshot eyes when last we met, I do recall, in the ash-mud streets on that slick and [...]
Poetry
Dying as an Art by Juleigh Howard-Hobson
Narrated by Juleigh Howard-Hobson For some, death is final, with regrets, dark And forever. For others, death is not So finely grave as that. A sad remark. A mention. Nothing much. And then forgot, Inevitably ... no one could ever Mourn and who would ever care? People die Every day. Most of them hardly matter, [...]
Poetry
The Woman With Leaves in Her Hair by Stephanie Smith
Diners pass daydreams across the table The woman with leaves in her hair sighs and sips on darkness, mascara made of crematorium ash dripping from her eyes She fears aging and reads obituaries for comfort at the end of the day Cuts out the old people and pastes them in a scrapbook Tucks it neatly [...]
Poetry
buried under light by John Reinhart
Narrated by John Reinhart my daughter behind me six feet in the air, fluttering, arms outstretched to catch the breeze she yells down to me, laughing – I move faster, letting out more line, raising my daughter behind me as I stumble forward, trying to remember the feeling of arms outstretched to catch the breeze. [...]