#61: Fiction by Raynald Nayler

IN THE PETRIFIED FOREST  My husband and I are turning circles in a parking lot. Circles and more circles. Very slowly. We’ve been doing this for what seems like forever. Anton is nervous, and I’m trying to calm him down.  Maybe another ten minutes, and we’ll get out on the road. Maybe. “Hand over hand, […]

#58: Fiction by Robert Sachs

THE RING ON RUBY RIFKIN’S PINKY When people in the old neighborhood mentioned Howard “Ruby” Rifkin, it was with a whisper.  He was in the mob, they said, a protégé of Hymie Weiss. He had done hard time. When I was ten and living in Chicago, he was my neighbor, although neither I nor anyone […]

#57: Fiction by Wood Reede

MAN ON THE MOON In her dream she was flying over the coast of Africa. Not that she had ever been to Africa, but she just knew that the landmass below was, in fact, the southern tip of Africa. That is how dreams usually go. There are no questions or uncertainties—things just are. She then […]

#55: Fiction by Robin Lanehurst

TO SEE THE WIZARD Tornadoes scratched at the sky’s green edges, threatening ruin. Clouds swirled like dirty pond water, scummy algae surfacing and submerging. Tips of trees whipped, chopped, like greens in a food processor, beating every ounce of nourishing vitamins into healthy, earthy pulp. It wasn’t raining but pounding, splitting every blade of glass, […]

#52: Fiction by Linda Caradine

BROTHER JOHN We was country. That’s why when Mamma and Daddy Pete had John, we knowed he was special. He had him a light bright color and good hair. He didn’t look nothing like the rest of the Tillman kids. We were sure he would be knowed as more than just one of the big […]

#48: Fiction by Geoffrey Polk

PAWNSHOPS, DAYLIGHT MOONS “Joe and I are getting married,” my mother said. We were making spaghetti, the two of us. I was opening cans for her, getting out plates and napkins, the bottle of no-year wine. I was divorced. She was a widow. We were statistics standing in her underlit kitchen. “Tuxes, limos, flower girls?” […]

#45: Fiction by Philip Brunetti

AUGUST OFF He had to have August off. This was necessary. He had summer savage in his blood—il salavaggio. He couldn’t go to work.  He couldn’t be in an office, a cubicle, facing a computer screen. The death sentence of clicks. *** He had to have August off. He wanted to get drunk on the […]

#41: Fiction by Jamilla D. VanDyke-Bailey

ON WEDNESDAY WE EAT MEATLOAF She was watching the kitchen faucet’s muted drip when he called. She let the phone ring once, twice, and then silence. It was his way of letting her know that she had thirty-seven minutes to plate his dinner. She sighed and rose from her seat. Out of habit, she smoothed […]

#38: Fiction by Nancy Ford Dugan

BELUSHI IN THE BLINDS This is how it begins. You can’t find the new box of saltines, the box only a few hours earlier you had opened, taking a handful of fresh crackers out of the sleeve. Now you’d like a few more, even though you are rationing supplies during “shelter in place,” and it […]

#36: Fiction by Glenn Verdi

THE ARMY YOU HAVE The aquifer dries up and there is no money to dig a new well. The bank in Las Cruces takes the land. Justin’s parents and four siblings pack up and move into town. His father settles for a midnight shift desk clerk job at a motel near the Greyhound station. His […]