‘Above the spume!’ Dr Gerasimos Evangelatos chants as he presses his disputed sandal to the pedal. Cephalus, his family’s latest ‘stray’—though what is a stray cat but an unmet friend?—gingerly stares from the front basket. ‘Above the foam of the sea!’
Continue reading “Nothing Else That I Would Ask by Antony Osgood”
The chemistry of life in an era of endless miracles can be deceptively corrosive. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Like putting a hen’s egg in vinegar, it reveals the soft, internal wonders of the world—the things we’re so prone to build shells and containers around. Living in this era of endless miracles does, however, require special handling and some degree of caution. It often demands we abandon our reliance on the element of reason. Just as you should never mix vinegar with bleach, parsing miracles with reason and rationality can blister your lungs and blind you where you stand.
A magician taught me this.
Continue reading “Pink Tongue Flailing by Dana Rollins”
I took long walks into the insomniac’s night. Wild music thumped on the deserted sidewalk. I peered into the smeary barroom window. A man in coveralls slept with his head on his arms at a table. Pool balls cracked next to his ear. Angry hairy faces, full of booze were engaged in the battle of the green felt, and blood may spill. I walked onward before I drew some menace from the watering hole. Then I met the traveler on a starless street corner.
Continue reading “A Starless Street Corner by Christopher J Ananias.”
“Wake up, rascals. See who is here,” trills our aunt Sivamathi.
Her high-pitched shrill vibrates off her tongue against her palate and pierces through our sleep.
“It must be Muttu, that rickety idiot, come to torture us with puzzles,” I guess.
With sunshine trembling on our eyelashes and seeping into our bodies, we two brothers continue to stretch ourselves lazily.
Continue reading “Bulls and Blood, Line and Lineage by Chitra Gopalakrishnan”
The groaning and gibbering column of mourners stood over the small, still warm cat. All wept and shook save three. The old man, leaning slightly harder on his left side, looked only at the boy, his daughter’s son. The boy was silent also, though wore the look of the savaged. The third to keep from buckling to the emotion of the scene was the vet who had administered the barbiturates.
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