Reader Alert – Please refer to tabs
So I’m yankin’ this thing out the drainpipe, getting’ blood up me cuffs, while those little twats are creasin’ up in the car park. They’ve proper mashed it up, n’all: it’s comin’ out in handfuls; I can feel its guts through me rubber gloves.
Continue reading “Jesu-Vape by Robin Dennis”
Adam is one of our more unusual writers. Since very early in the history of LS, November 2015 he has sent us quirky pieces often accompanied by his very individual art. He is a delight to interact with and is obviously a shoo in for an author interview and that treat is to come. However, one of the questions has also spawned this memoir, which was too good to turn down. And so please enjoy a bonus, Adam Kluger.
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Adam Kluger”
Author’s Note
Orville Baumgardner is the chattiest of men. He grew up in an Indiana farm town, graduated from a small rural college with gentlemen’s Cs, and used his gift of gab to get elected to the Indiana House of Representatives. Orville prides himself on having read over two hundred books, including most of the classics, yet sustained a career as a populist politician by promoting deep state conspiracy theories to his constituents. After twenty years, Orville gave up politics because he had a crisis of conscience. He has since lectured on numerous topics, including abortion, book banning, and corporate corruption, and his spiels have appeared in many literary journals. Although he has recently left this world, he continues to lecture in the afterlife.
Continue reading “Orville Baumgardner and the Morning Glories byJames Hanna”
Birdie was the strongest, bravest, most determined girl in her neighborhood. Everyone knew it; her big sister Charlotte said so. Birdie loved her home. She loved the way the honeysuckle perfumed the sidewalk outside her apartment. She loved the plant’s delicate flowers, the tiny explosions of pink and red. She even loved the cooler months, when flowers lose their bloom and fall, and paint the ground in Technicolor. Most of all she loved her sister. Charlotte was so beautiful. Her hair curled and zig-zagged, and her eyes reminded Birdie of Momma’s homemade caramel.
Continue reading “Charlotte by Jeremy Akel”
On Saturday night, Leon and his friend Max “The Rhythm Wonders,” played guitar and sang at Tom Kosk’s stag party. Tom was engaged to Samantha Ciaccia, the wedding scheduled in one week. He was already living with her, in a double wide trailer in the bush under Mount Baldy.
Continue reading “Leon’s Magic Love by Harrison Kim”
You’re wondering about that? That old jar, yeah, that’s somethin’ I got years ago…
Continue reading “A Good Hen by T.G. Roettiger”
The hole was definitely growing.
Jonty could tell, having just woken from a nap, face tingling with grass imprints and a half-crushed flailing ladybird stuck on his eyelashes, to find the hole bigger and nearer.
Jonty was seen as a shabby, acceptable kind of aristo who loitered in gardens on dewy mornings, drunk or whimsical, misquoting Homer and asking for a crustless sandwich while he sat, as squat as a stone rounded by a forgiving sea, marvelling at the stains on his tie.
Continue reading “Personal Growth by Ben Fitton”
Text 9:40 pm “It’s not the same without you [shrug emoji].”
Text 9:41 pm, Spotify link, “Tu Orgullo” [Your pride]
Text 9:42 pm, Spotify link, “Estoy Aquí” [I’m here]
Part of me wanted to type, are you fucking kidding me, after four years, still with this bullshit? What part of “we’re divorced” is not resonating with you? The other half of me knew that there was no possible way to reply. Every reply would be the wrong reply. To respond to the substance—really, my pride was the problem, you cheating bastard?—would be to invite more back and forth. (That our split was all about my pride was one of his constant refrains.) To remind him that I’d asked him to stop sending texts like these would bring the rejoinder that he knew that already, but couldn’t I see his true and beautiful love, a true and beautiful love that existed in and around the totally incidental cheating that went on sporadically ever since we got together when we were twenty-two? Couldn’t I see that he had given me every reason over decades to fight for him and for our relationship? What was wrong with me?
Continue reading “Ghost by Margaret Wells”
The monster on the beach lies on his side – bigger than a boat, sadder than the ocean. The seafront’s deserted at dawn, so I leave my bike in the empty car park, next to the tariff sign that upsets the tourists. My shoes imprint into the wet sand as I approach him, the creature from another world.
Continue reading “Ghost of a Shark by Neil James”
Morning breaks the window open, sets sunlight to shatter on the floor, the scorpions to scatter. They run for walls, but Jordan climbs from bed, his dream head raw, brooms them to the door.
Continue reading “The Crying Girl by Victor D Sandiego”
literally stories 