My mother always liked the idea of being queen. I think that’s why I hated her so much.
Though she believed we lived in a palace our home was modest and our garden was, to my delight, unruly. She wore clothes she couldn’t afford, stained with perfumes so sweet they made me feel sick. Her king had left her and she had no other children. Her only kingdom was me.
Continue reading “Mother by Josh Walker”
You find meaning where you make it, I thought, polishing off my second bourbon and getting up to leave. I’d stopped by Puffy’s after an early piano gig, hoping to take the edge off before heading home. I couldn’t stop thinking about the old man —always worrying about him, continually reframing the narrative in my mind. I’m grateful for the time I have left with him was the best I could come up with.
Continue reading “In For a Penny, In For a Pound by David Thomas Peacock”
Bill McCullister is usually tilling in the garden, sweeping off the porch, or oiling the hinges on the banged-up screen door. Except Sundays. He wakes in the morning and washes away soil and sweat not worked into his weathered skin. Two quick swipes through what hair is left him and the comb is deposited into the broken-handled mug on the porcelain sink. A clean tee shirt mostly by faded overalls, work boots, and a tattered baseball cap promoting a grain company no longer in business completes the look. If the wind is especially biting, he might toss on his wool coat. He drives the ‘58 Ford truck down the shady lane to Hagmans Crossing, the rusty rocker panels and fenders rattling. Stones kicked up from the tires bang against the undercarriage. The road ends on Route 10 and he cranks her hard to the right, rolling through the stop sign, heading for Ashwell. Bill watches the signpost for the county line slide across the chipped side view mirror before he pitches over Devil’s Hill.
Continue reading “Sunday Papers by Darren A Deth”
My older sister Nan makes promises. Promises to visit, promises to talk soon. Drops “luv yas” in, hasty afterthoughts. Texts that she’s proud of me too, even if they’re in sentence fragments.
But the promises keep rising and rising. Talk tomorrow, visit next month, two months. Promises are splayed across my consciousness.
Continue reading “Promise by Yash Seyedbagheri”
I think about amputation, a lot. Not the sort carried out by a scalpel but by the jagged blade of fate, leaving me immobilised, an inmate in my own home and haunted by a phantom limb I didn’t know I had. And so here I am, full of emptiness, tired by inactivity and blinded by a porthole to another self. A self that isn’t me.
Continue reading “Breathe by Leon Coleman”
We spoke on the phone for a couple of weeks before we met. It was nice talking to a woman again, calling someone on my ride home from work. I knew it wouldn’t really be going anywhere; she lived 3 hours way and had a 12-year-old to boot. Still. It was nice talking to a woman again.
Continue reading “Sarah by Yancarlo Rivera”
She shrieks, and the noise echoes through the vast space and up towards the high, glass roof. She is half running, half tottering through Glasgow Central Station wearing a pair of siren blue stilettos. They clatter. A huddle of lads, all pastel shirted up for a night in the town, look over and stare. She throws her arms around me as if it’s a feckin lover’s reunion. ‘Bernadette. Oh My God,’ she squeals. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’
Continue reading “One Treacherous Evening by Claire Deans”
“Hey, don’t you worry. I got your back. I will always be here for you.”
That’s my brother, Medgar, named after Medgar Evers, talking to his twelve-year-old daughter, Shirley, named after Shirley Chisholm.
Continue reading “A Good Person by Frederick K Foote”
The waitress who has taken my order wears a sepia-coloured dress, checkers faded and hem ruffled. She excuses herself as she leans in and wipes the table with a damp cloth. On her sleeve is a single red, round button. It gleams. She asks me something. My car is parked between two cargo trucks. I’m not usually the type of person who visits roadside diners. The red, round button reflects the light from the fluorescent lamp, its four holes laced with loose black thread.
Continue reading “Ladybird by Joy Florentine”
Nick takes pictures of smiles, in coffee shops, at the store.
He especially likes crooked smiles, like his older sister Nan’s. When she smiled. When she was a being and not a shadow in the past tense. He’s tried to store her smiles like contraband. A smile on the way to bed, the two of them exchanging a glance. A smile pronouncing his nickname. Nicky. Or a smile while watching The Big Lebowski, a smile transforming into real, crackled laughter, especially when The Dude lit a joint without care.
But time makes it impossible to store things.
Continue reading “The Shadow of Your Smile by Yash Seyedbagheri”
