I finished shaving. A $10 coffee shop gift card was in the car, and although I knew I should hit the weights and take my usual morning walk, I also felt like a lazy day was not a bad idea.
Janice nudged me aside on her way to the ensuite.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
‘Dunno,’ I said while pawing through the underwear drawer for just the right pair—supportive but not too bossy.
Continue reading “The Margin of the River by Mitchell Toews”
This is my confessional right here. Instead of an old wooden box full of stale air, I sit on a rickety old concrete porch at a rusty metal table with a stained-glass top. I always stay in room 107. The seashell wallpaper makes me want to die, and the air stings with the putrid stench of vomit, but this room has a perfect view of Main Street. This motel is the only part of this hick town that’s worth a damn. I fill my glass ashtray, stained yellow with wear, with cigarette butts as I spill my sins and people watch.
Continue reading “Confessions 1:07 by Kendra Yvette”
The hollowed out and exhausted mother followed by a descending parabola of thirteen brown-haired heads crossed the already dark movie theater, the family that does that, that walks in late through everyone’s view. The animation had already leapt to life, and the children groped behind themselves to find their seats, eyes locked on the towering screen. In a short moment, the mother was asleep, having provided the only rare, small gift she could afford to give to this desperate and fatherless brood.
Continue reading “The Cave by James W. Miller”
I run my finger along the marker at the edge of our farm. Its wood is parched from time and weather. A locomotive’s soprano voice carries across the prairie. I picture that engine puffing into a station where the platform swirls with a symphony of tongues. I think of families boarding with slumped shoulders and weary eyes. I recall how we, my parents, my brothers and I, stepped onto the colonist car with its sunlit windows and faintly sweet fragrance. Around us, men snored while mothers cooed at young ones latched to their breast. I witnessed my older brother, Wasyl, rub his teary eyes as the train pulled us westward.
Continue reading “Eighteen Ninety-Seven by Pauline Shen”
I’m standing in Euclid Square Park as I write this with an orange pen on repurposed paper (probably an angry, unpaid bill). (Later it will be typed).
I’m standing next to a small tree.
Tied to the tree are three dogs who I helped rescue, and who rescued me: Bandit, Boo and Colonel.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Leila and the Mimeo Revolution by Dale Williams Barrigar”
Here we are at Week 527!
Before we begin, I’d like to mention an actor who passed away this week and was in three of my favourite films that I have watched numerous times; ‘The Towering Inferno’, ‘The Count Of Monte Cristo’ and ‘The Man In The Iron Mask’.
R.I.P. Richard Chamberlain.
Continue reading “Week 527 – Buddy Love, All Carry On Included And Millions Are So Difficult To Budget With.”
There were precious few ways of getting your point across in life and so Vern liked to shout at people. He shouted at them in restaurants, he shouted at them in supermarkets, he screamed in their faces out on the street. He would go in to get a sandwich and the woman would apply too little mayonnaise.
Continue reading “Have Your Say by Scott Taylor”
Jimmy the Wizard and I stand in front of a large apartment complex. Jimmy says that somewhere behind this wood and stucco facade my guardian angel shimmers. It waits to be released. Jimmy takes two steps back.
“Examine the walls,” he says.
I once shared a cell with a con from Detroit named Marty Ballantine. He had a blazing shock of red hair and was tall and looked more like an ex-basketball player than the head of accounting until his firm realized he was skimming. He had a young girlfriend on the side, an expensive marriage and mortgage, and combined with greed, he got caught. Big surprise. I couldn’t really picture him in a blue suit and red tie, slaving away at debits and credits. But his orange jumpsuit went well with his red hair.
Continue reading “Killing Time by Michael Loyd Gray”
The ice cream the night before was so hard I couldn’t scoop it. Today it was a cloudy tub of sweet milk. The Budweiser, I swore off, was piss warm. Even so—with all my new promises made to Denny—that was disappointing. I clicked my dry mouth. Denny watched me like how the sparrow watches the hawk circling in the sky. She looked down at her bandaged hands.
Continue reading “Dirty Screen by Christopher Ananias “
literally stories 