Sometimes I feel sick remembering how I talked to him. I want to go back and shake myself – No, Robert! No! Cut it out! But I did and I can’t undo it. Besides, he only ever mentions it in passing and when he does I sort myself out. I suppose he thinks I might shout again, but I don’t want to. I hated that I did.
Continue reading “Guitar Lessons by Otto Alexander”
I was recently involved in the death of a man right here inside the Free Library.
He began making bird sounds near me. The cawing and trilling made it impossible to concentrate on my writing. When I moved, he followed. The bird songs grew louder and more long-winded.
My father, a Marine, told me that bird noises reminded him of a battle he fought inside a dark nameless jungle. Birds, he learned the hard way, unintentionally telegraph your location to the enemy. I am now older than my father was when he died inside our garage.
Continue reading “Time Capsule by Leland Neville”
It wasn’t much good, the thing that was him. No wonder he was screwed up now. No wonder He’d unmade him, rolled him out like dough and balled him up again.
Continue reading “Workshop by Lesley Warren”
I’m talking with Mrs. Everton, the anorexic faced one-lung Grandmother puffing cigs by the wood stove as snow falls outside. She tells me more blizzards fell in years past, we’re not snowed in yet. She coughs, continues again in that smoky voice; my best friend Keith’s over by the fridge laughing with Lori Baker. Lori’s Mrs. Everton’s niece, black haired, pale faced, arms thin as branches stuck from a frost covered sapling, and fifteen years old.
Continue reading “What I Will Not Become by Harrison Kim”
Every evening before her bath and bed, Caroline and I cover the half-mile loop of our street lined with towering Loblolly pines and small, neat single-story brick houses. Caroline rides her tiny bike a few yards ahead of me, alternating between steadying taps of her sneakers on the gummy pavement and wobbly pedaling as her sundress flutters over the mosquito bites on her shins and ankles. A few mosquitoes hover around Caroline’s brown curls.
Continue reading “One Hundred Percent Sure by Daniel Shiffman”
Mendacity and RBH
Ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand to avoid the Awful Truth. That mendacity has been around since Roman times and should be purged from the metaphor store. Only people behave that way, and when an animal does the same, you can rest assured that she/he is only mocking you.
Continue reading “Week 494: Mendacity; Come Home Rutherford B. Hayes; Cool Stories to Beat the Heat; Health Tonics”
I saw a little man riding a child’s bicycle in Berwyn, Illinois, outside Chicago, on the sidewalk, along Roosevelt Road. He was carrying a guitar; this was the first thing that caught my attention. The guitar was strapped over his back. But it was also slung down partly across the side of his body so he could cuddle it with one arm while he steered the bike with the other and pedaled the small pedals with his small legs.
Continue reading “The Old Guitarist by Dale W Barrigar”
Nobody hitchhikes anymore. That went out in the ’60s when Nam vets and the hippies with their thumbs out could be found along any West Coast highway. But hitchhiking in January? Even some stoned freak knew better. Besides, it’s 2024 and I’m almost 80. This is stupid, really stupid. Maybe I can blame my poor judgment on dementia. But then, if I can understand what dementia is all about, I probably don’t have it.
I’ve already bit my tongue; I taste blood. I can’t feel the ends of my fingers. I’m such an idiot.
Continue reading “Cold by Terry Sanville”
The City found itself with a problem: what began as a natural hole in the earth where Its citizens had thrown away their evil had helter-skeltered into a voracious toxic Abyss. The City thought it could wash it away by pouring water down the hole, but that only made the evil float to the surface. It had heard about an Angel that was sent to another place to deal with the problem of evil and that that place had finally (and stupidly, so thought The City proudly as It would never be as stupid as that Other Place) destroyed The Angel and that microscopic pieces of The Angel drifted about the land wreaking vengeance.
Continue reading “The Universal Absorbent by Phoebe Reeves”
We all worried. Ever since he came back from Glasgow, Uncle Neil seemed different, jauntier. And it wasn’t just the new hat. He strutted around the village, singing in an uneven baritone. Whistling. To be honest, we thought he’d bagged someone and felt sorry for Auntie Sandy. But it wasn’t that.
Continue reading “Birds by Sarah Macallister”
literally stories 