Kyla scanned the exhibit, looking for the kangaroo. When she asked her dad where it had gone, he shrugged. She asked again, and all he said was, “Sorry, honey. This has been happening more and more recently.”
Continue reading “The First Thing She Noticed Disappear Was a Kangaroo by Michael Degnan”
William stands on the upper level of a parkade leaning on a shopping cart some employee had forgotten to rack up with the others. He’s waiting for a friend to pick up a jug of organic milk. He knows his friend will be forever and come up the elevator loaded with ‘two-for-one’s’ and any specials he can find on pasta, ice cream and pineapple juice, not to mention a stack of car magazines. William doesn’t mind waiting. It’s two in the morning and a beautiful night in San Francisco, the concrete rooftop a checker board of symmetrical parking spaces, the only vehicle on the horizon his friend’s sky blue Dodge Caravan, clean and American in its loneliness.
Continue reading “Man With a Shopping Cart by Tom Bentley-Fisher”
“Hey Doug, could you come to the boardroom?”
“Sure, what’s this about?” I said.
The line went stunted. He was conferring and I knew I had come back to see my old friend Trouble once more. To any nose-presser looking in it had the appearance of me fucking up and letting my mouth get ahead of my brain but it wasn’t like that. Not this time. I had allowed my mouth to run rings in the past. I had gotten caught up in disciplinary matters which were supposed to take six weeks but they had dragged on for years. They were supposed to take six weeks so as to not cause too much undue distress but they wanted the distress. They wanted the distress because the distress might help them achieve what they couldn’t with ability alone. They wanted me gone. Gone by resignation or at the end of a short rope and a strong light fixture like some friends. After a little more dead air and conferring, he spoke again:
Continue reading “© 2016 by David Louden”
Alan stepped out of the shower, singing that he wasn’t going to work on Maggie’s farm no more. He threw on some clothes and headed off to the baker’s for a couple of Aberdeen Rolls (‘rowies’), well-fired. En route, he picked up a copy of the Saturday edition of the Press & Journal (‘Start the Day with the P&J’).
Continue reading “Keeper of the Snowy Owls? by Michael Bloor”
There was always a touched soul on the mental ward who thought they were God. Jonathan Clark was one such soul. He lingered in white pajamas offering consul and comfort, even the nurses came to speak with him. I met him on the 4th floor of the Behaviour of Medicine at a hospital in Elkhart Indiana. His departure, as spectacular as it was, affected Greg the most.
Continue reading “Our Lunatic Uniform by Christopher Ananias”
It was no one’s fault: a catch and a lurch as he sat in the back of the truck, legs dangling, half asleep. The planet stopped him or he would still be falling. No cars came by, but evening did – softly -as he lay there. A maple tree grew at the side of the road. The moon grew from a branch of the tree, detached itself and floated up to clouds where it became embedded in the misty horizontal filaments. But this was all a dream to him as he lay in the middle of the road.
Continue reading “The Natural Man by T.A. Young”
She was asleep now, her head leaning on his outstretched arm, her delicate, dainty fingers finally relaxing their grip on his huge, calloused hand. The musky scent of her beautiful, long hair, she was so proud of it, stirred up old memories of happier times. He knew every inch of her face, her lovely, big brown eyes that always seemed so full of wonderment, her delicate lips…. He was afraid to move for fear of awakening her, but he needed to relieve his numbing arm. And to do so quickly before being forced to make some abrupt movement that might disturb her. It was pitch black…. He mustn’t turn on the light.
Continue reading “At the Barn in Winter by Michael Barrington”
The dog never speaks without a pencil in his paw. On good days he may draw for you a line, a rectangle, a box, a room that becomes; what do you want? Might it be a bodega in some Latin American country, a taverna, a shack where drinks and mescal are served, a room where women also give away their forgetfulness potions. He is never quite precise as to which, and the voice that accompanies the blossoming picture is merely shading pencil.
Continue reading “The Dog Who Could Draw by Stephen J Kimber”
Moose was one of Bugowski’s best friends but it was getting late and time to hit the hay and stop talking about sports and how to start acting more like a fucking adult instead of a stubborn and terrified man-child, perpetually stuck in the mud.
Continue reading “It all goes dark by Adam Kluger “
I was a son of segregation born in a small Virginia village. My heritage was discrimination without the possibility of assimilation.
At age six, on my first day at our all-Black school, I played the fool and set myself down beside a strange, weird creature named Bernice Lighthorse.
Continue reading ” Cycle by Frederick K Foote”
literally stories 