There’s a smell, a humid kind of smell. Wet concrete—car fumes. A fire hydrant cracked open, cool water steaming on the New York July sidewalk. I remember because my feet were burning. Cool water on too warm concrete soles.
Continue reading “Bullfrog by S. M. Rosen”
Nate’s flight was late landing, it took forever to get off the plane, and then his bag didn’t come out.
“Son of a bitch.”
Continue reading “Baggage By Richard Jones”
Long before Máire’s time, the village of Mallow was a peaceful settlement in Munster, its fields rich and its people rooted deep in the land. But in the late fifteenth century, calamity struck—a raid by an English militia descended like a plague.
Continue reading “Woven from Memory [*] by Dr A.A. Chibi”
Two in the morning. The air was luminous, chalky, bloated with humidity. The smoke detector was a broken stoplight, stuck on green all night. Exhausted, jet lagged, eyeing the light, I thought of my ninety-eight-year-old grandmother Ida.
Continue reading “Super Moon in Rome by David Levine”
She’s in the middle of the street – a blur, a twirl, of color, this woman with a boombox. She’s not safe behind barricades or idling in a car as the rest of us are. She wears no coat, no makeup, shielded only by her floral dress.
Continue reading “The Dancing Woman by Bradley J. Collins”
Tonight Jack would talk to the ghost. He took to the street. The warm wind is blowing on his face. Splash—pound—Nikes scrape the edge of a curb. Whoa that was close. He lets his mind wander down into his feet. His mind is splash-pound.
Continue reading “Are You Going to Kalamazoo? By Christopher Ananias “
I write about Jeanie just to keep her alive, her memory is a ghost in these pages. Though it hurts to remember, the pain is easier to bear than the emptiness. So I return again and again to the image of her face which at first was burned into my mind but now begins to fade – the lines once sharp and vivid are loose and blurred.
Continue reading “Her Ghost in These Pages by Daniel Joseph Day”
The soft couch encouraged recollection. The locked door made it more difficult. A space heater ticked rhythmically in the corner. Lying prone, Johnson stared at the ceiling, and into his past.
Continue reading “The Bottom Drawer by Foster Trecost”
She sat up, prim and proper, as if in counterpoint to her casually draped robes and the haphazardly pillowed sedan chair. Like for her previous sittings, she was artfully arranged in Laurent’s beautiful courtyard, the scent of flowers filling her nose. Her lover looked up from his canvas to offer a conspiratorial wink, as her loosely wrapped coverings rippled in the breeze and brushed against her skin. The slight movement of the cloth kept the glow of their lovemaking fresh, and the faint curve of her lips betrayed imperfectly hidden delight.
Continue reading “The Moment by Evan Hale”
My brother parks the car opposite the house with the red door that used to be grey. The treeless street looks even grimmer than I recall. I glance at the rows of identical houses with the grey pebble-dash walls, trying to remember the neighbours who once occupied them. Women in pinnies and headscarves scrubbing their front steps. Sweeping their concrete paths. Men rolling drunk up those paths. Sound of yelling and slapping. Immaculately dressed children with polished shoes.
Continue reading “Colour Clash by Sandra Arnold”
literally stories 