My wife, Mary, and I sit on the deck of The Boatyard, a Sarasota seafood restaurant. Since our retirement, we lunch here several times a month. Mary is eating a hamburger because she is allergic to seafood. I am devouring fish-and-chips, which I have smothered with malt vinegar.
Continue reading “Biff Malibu by James Hanna”
There was a special sight out in front of him as he rested near a small cave, the weight of his own body suddenly too much for him to carry on weak legs. The decision to stop and enjoy the sight came quickly, in touch with a rare sense of goodness finding its way in him. It was akin to the old days when Sally and he sat on the small porch he’d built for her mornings, the sun giving a grand start to her day. “Oh, Sal,” he’d said a thousand times since then. A thousand times. Once, he had shrugged his head when he said it, as though belief was elsewhere, as Sally was but how long he couldn’t remember.
Continue reading “Too Lonely for Dying by Tom Sheehan”
Mother, the one who birthed us, was the one who turned the oven on. Tossed us in there, my older sister Nan and me, as though we were turkeys at Thanksgiving. She was too strong for us to resist, though we tried, squirming, kicking. But she was still strong.
Continue reading “Step by Yash Seyedbagheri”
Sunday morning, and some idiot is trying to start his piece of crap car, cranking it over and over. Will that battery never die? There’s no fuel or no air or a lack of both and all the hope in the world is not going to light that sorry engine off. Give it a rest, will you please, for the love of all things holy, or if not divine then at least civil?
Continue reading “Quiet Longed For, and You by Marco Etheridge”
I knew it was one of “those” days the very moment I woke up, my head spinning as dawn clustered around me calling for attention, trying to snap me back to a real encounter, not the lingering touches of darkest night I had no control over.
Continue reading “Strange Encounter by Tom Sheehan”
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A Saturday Morning, 1975 b.c.e
One, two, three, four, five…
One, two, three, four, five…
One, two, three, four–
As she lay in bed, Tess shoved the early morning hum of the street and small under-noises in the apartment out of her mind and focused solely on the little clicks she heard in Anna Lou’s room.
Tess knew about Anna-Lou’s habit. Her mother was a careless telephone gossip, especially when in her wine, which was pretty much always. “The doctor’s been feeding her Percodan and God knows what since they shot Lincoln.”–or something similar, was what Mom said to friends on the phone when the subject was Great Aunt Louise. For some boozy reason, Mom believed if she lowered her voice to a confidential tone that neither of her children would make a special effort to listen.
Continue reading “1975 b.c.e. By Leila Allison”
Fat Freddy hated laundry. He hated the insolent way the grotesque pile grew. He hated the smug swish-swash sound of the washing machine, and the self-satisfying whirr of its spin cycle. And after all that, he especially hated the selfishness of the dryer keeping all that warmth for itself and the undeserving clothes. One day, he thought, it’s all going to come to a boil.
Continue reading “Laundry Night by John D. Connelley”
I came back in the autumn for a short weekend. I’d forgotten that it was autumn; where I live the trees are like monuments that never change, but nothing lasts forever does it?
Continue reading “The Way You Always Were by Otto Alexander”
“Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, until it flashed upon his mind, ‘this is the day of my death!’”
I’ve always felt this sentence deserved a career just as glamorous as the opening lines of the same novel. While everyone clocks in on “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”, probably only a handful of specialists can locate these words. Shame; they are natural born ambassadors for an awakening, a bitter but important jolt of consciousness. Like the one I experienced the afternoon I got fired from the customer service advisor team of a medium-size supermarket.
Continue reading “Apologies by Dora Emma Esze”
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