#116: Fiction by Laura J Morris

Spatch-Cock’d I stuff the chicken. One hand up and under its skin. My fingers pushing the soft buttery mixture between its skin and flesh, massaging, rolling, caressing its rawness with my butter-y lemon-y fingers, plumping it. Readying it. 400 degrees. Like that. Roasted. Crispy skin in my mouth. Crackle. Crunch. And yum! Why can’t I […]

#112: Fiction by Siamak Vossoughi

NEW IN TOWN I had moved to the kind of town where if during the course of normal conversation, the question of where I was from came up and I told them that I was Iranian, somebody would say, “Okay, but you’re on our side, right?”, which is what happened the first time I went […]

#109: Fiction by Krissi Stocks

MOUNTAIN ASH Iris was determined. She would stay here until her fingers froze and her lips turned blue. A nine-year-old popsicle. She remembered reading a story about people who died from hypothermia. In the end, you feel hot. Often, people who died were found naked, frozen in place, trying to cool off. Maybe she should […]

#100: Fiction by Kay McSpadden

TWICE-TOLD TALE “It is annoying to have to tell the same tale twice.”      -Homer, The Odyssey   ***   Nell liked to say that she and Grant married each other two times, but that wasn’t technically true.  They’d met when they played the leads in their high school production of Our Town, Grant as George […]

#99: Fiction by Nam Tran

CARBON DATING After an ex-lover left him emotionally paralyzed for the better part of ten years, my uncle John decided at 53 to give relationships another go. Had someone asked him before what qualities were desirable in a woman, he would’ve listed any number of things. Now, older and wiser from the sting of heartbreak, […]

#98: Fiction by P.J. Powell

GENEROUS FEMALE VILLAINS GIVE FREELY IN THEIR “BUY NOTHING” GROUP Cersei Lannister – Admin says Congratulations! Your request to join this Buy Nothing Facebook group has been approved. While other Buy Nothing groups welcome all local neighbors, our group is limited to approved villains who identify as female.  In this group, feel free to post: […]

#97: Fiction by Linda Briskin

MODEST SABOTAGE At St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, I was hoping for a multitude of Christs on crosses, pale anemic skin, blood dripping from hands, loins diaper-wrapped, bodies hanging limply. I had plans. Christ with a delicately painted pink triangle on his loincloth, spangles in his beard, a lizard tattoo on his chest, stylish blond […]

#94: Fiction by Joanna Galbraith

PIRATE X Barry Becker’s decision to become a pirate was mostly his father’s doing, with a further inopportune nudge from a career guidance counselor when the lad was just shy of sixteen.  It all began as an innocent game devised by Barry’s father which had involved nothing more than drawing an X on a town […]

#91: Fiction by Maria Wickens

DOUBLE EXPOSURE The translation of Woomera is Big Spear, but the locals call it Big Evil. Kurdaitcha, the Aboriginal shaman of death, waits outside the rocket range, surveying the activity inside. “Gubbah, the white man, always marching onward. Progress, he calls it.” Kurdaitcha’s lips peel back into a smile. “Ah, Gubbah dreaming is eternal; the […]