Tag: poverty

All Stories, General Fiction

This Sorrowful Home by Devin James Leonard

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I only eat meat, what the kids nowadays call a carnivore diet. Out back of the house, I got a garden, but that’s for the wife and kids. I haven’t had a vegetable since I was thirteen years old, and for that, I blame my pops. Blame my mama for other things, like why I save every dollar I earn for booze and smokes and complain about the lights being left on in rooms nobody’s in. They’re the reason my two boys are running around with ripped jeans and holes in their shoes, why I got a woodstove instead of a furnace, and why I don’t allow pets under my roof, no matter how much the kids beg me.

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All Stories, General Fiction

What I Will Not Become by Harrison Kim

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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. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

Ta Da Dum Bing – a story by Michael Henson

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The L train had stopped at the Lorimer Street Station on its way from Manhattan back to Brooklyn when the young man sensed a sudden excitement in the car. He raised his eye from the book he was reading as a full-size stand-up bass sailed past. In moments, a trio of Mexican musicians had set up in the middle of the car.

He nudged his girlfriend “Look,” he said.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Patsy’s Last Gig by JD Clapp

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Patsy flipped his eggs in the small frying pan, sizzling on the coils of his portable electric burner. Thin bacon smoke hung in his room. Can’t let that old bat of a landlady catch me cooking. He walked five steps to the room’s sole window, pounded the frame to break the ice seal, and opened it. Rochester’s mid-winter night air hit him like an arctic blast.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Tea for Two by Rachel Sievers

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The door opens, the day is warm and the sun is already rising burning off the last wisps of fog. The child moves over the threshold holding a tortilla she found in the pantry. Last week the food bank handed out tortillas and she had filled her backpack full of them. Tortillas were good with anything from beans to peanut butter. This morning it was plain but she did want to wake any of the guests from last night, still asleep on the floor. 

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Circle Route by Paul Kimm

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Jennifer finished the last slice of defrosted quiche she’d bought from the freezer shop on Monday. She switched off the gas fire. In the kitchen she rinsed off the plate under the tap, pastry crumbs, and slotted it on the drying rack. She put on her coat, shoes, unlocked the back door, stepped outside, locked it, and walked the five minutes to the bus stop nearest her house.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Kiin Kiin Kiin by David Agyei-Yeboah.

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Kiin, kiin, kiin.

You wake up at 5:00am. There is a swarm of flies finding light outside the window. Your two toddlers are sound asleep, swaddled in patched up clothes. They yawn unexcitedly. The dog beneath the table drools. Before it is a plate of mashed kenkey.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Don’t Mess with Me by Harrison Kim

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Seventeen-year-old Jackson hunched up tight against the school wall smoking and laughing to himself, waiting for the bus and coming out of a daydream about performing at Carnegie Hall.  He noticed how brightly the dandelions bloomed on the sides of the culvert; the birch leaves fluttered above them.  He stubbed out his cancer stick.  His friend Robert P. hustled up, hauling a guitar stained dark brown with linseed oil.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Loaves of Life by Tom Sheehan

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When I invaded the Bond Bread Factory, as a hungry seven-year-older, on a plank from a neighboring building, my sister Patricia, younger by a year, was my scout, my watch dog, my whistleblower, all to make sure we’d have toast off our kitchen stovetop which required bread to begin with, mystifying my mother about “Who in these days gives fresh bread to kids on the prowl.

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All Stories, General Fiction

The Wait by Lisa Toner

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The child is painfully thin.  Her ribs poke against the taut skin of her back as she draws on the dusty floor with a stick.  She crouches on toothpick legs, supported by hardened feet which rarely see shoes.  The bottoms of her filthy white shorts graze the dirt floor.

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