Pen Gipperson wasn’t thrilled that he had to visit the attorney handling the lawsuit against him at a fuckhole office in Connecticut. Extremely inconvenient. But because of legal matters there was no way around it.
Continue reading “Mary Mary by Adam Kluger”
Translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
“Hey, Odol! School’s out?” We were on our way home when we heard this. Odori’s grandfather, crouched on the roof of their home and framed by jumbled white clouds streaming through a blue sky, was looking down at us. The prickly autumn sunlight glanced off the orange slate of the roof.
Continue reading “Odori’s Grandfather A miniature by O Chŏnghǔi”
Willie Ferguson lay staring at the wee cracks in his bedroom ceiling. Like a lot of people, he hadn’t realised, til he stopped working, that he was missing something. It sure as hell wasn’t the job that he missed: he’d collected his pension with a sigh of relief. It wasn’t family either: his sister, Margaret, living behind a privet hedge down in England, was emphatically a distant relative, and should ever remain so. But Willie knew he really was missing something.
Continue reading “Searching for Unicorns by Michael Bloor”
Across from her, Mabel was spooning her poached eggs while Emily rambled through a litany of complaints. Today it was the eggs, over-cooked, the night nurse tapping on her door at night, “You can’t hear her, can you, Frances? So annoying.” Frances nodded. Anything else would invite more exchanges with Emily, who laced every conversation with a side order of disdain. A smoke. She needed a smoke. Where was Jerome?
Continue reading “The Elephant in the Room by Barbara O’Byrne”
When things became worse, I brought my mother to our abandoned-since-Dad-died beach house for the summer. A sabbatical and a newly west coasted daughter freed me to lug Mom like a bag of silent, bewildered groceries into the passenger’s seat of my car. We sped along the highway from the city to the coast, chasing the rickety car of Mom’s memory, lumbering just ahead. I savored the hopeful sensation of control and the encroaching smell of sulfury sea air.
Continue reading “Things You Shouldn’t Say to Your Mother with Dementia by Maggie Nerz Iribarne”
Translated from the Korean by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton
The particles of snow, barely visible at first, thickened as the day wore on.
The nuisance of having to leave the comfort of home was tempered by the childlike effervescence triggered in me by this the first snowfall of the season.
Continue reading “Reunion – A miniature by O Chŏnghǔi”
When I walked into Helen Arbuckle’s room, I knew something was wrong. Her eyes were bright. She was watching television and smiling. She was alive. And I mean that in a way that the nearly-departed are not supposed to be alive. She was dying, for Hell’s sake. The least she could do is have the decency to look the part.
Continue reading “A Bad Day for Death by Thurman Hart”
There’s something about small islands: a bounded space, every corner familiar, memory-laden. I understand the attraction because I left and then returned. Like a lot of islanders, I joined the mercantile marine, but a bad fall left me lame in the right leg. So I came home to work as the harbour master. And now, in my sixties, I’m damn pleased I did.
Continue reading “The Disappearance by Michael Bloor”
They’re talking about me. I can’t hear the exact words, but I know it. Their eyes carefully shoot glances from time to time while their mouths move fast with worry and sympathy. I need someone to tell the doctor tomorrow that I don’t like this new medication. It makes my thoughts dizzy and my legs slower.
Continue reading “It Was Best Like This by Margarida Chagas”
Mr. Overalls comes into Old Da’s room at Henrytown Home for the Elderly and Infirm at night—not each night—but often—and pisses in the radiator. This is particularly problematic in winter. She tells Nurse Bee that she hears the hiss, which, she says, makes her queasy and uneasy, and she says she worries that if she can get used to the smell, she might be able to get used to anything, and she says she fears what it is she may have already gotten used to.
Continue reading “A Long Time Between Yesterday and Tomorrow by J Bradley Minnick”
literally stories 