He often told his wife about his twenty-first birthday. He and his father had sat under a bright red canopy on a dark, starless night. They were at some nameless Chinese restaurant in one of the metropolitan corners of Atlanta, just a few blocks south of Terminal Parkway, where commercial airplanes stitched long blinking lines across the sky. A half block away, he remembered, a street cleaner inched across the asphalt, brushes spinning in a lopsided, broken rhythm.
His wife Millicent had cheated on him and she would pay, but to Everett Harley it was much deeper than being unfaithful; she had constantly touched, with ridicule, what she thought was the most fragile element of his being, poetry; so, he made up his mind that he’d not allow her any pardon for her perils; no rhythm in leniency, no white space in the matter, no alliteration at all, at all.
Continue reading “Hence the Half-way House and the Poet by Tom Sheehan”
Daniel sat clutching a coffee, staring into the blur of humanity. He wasn’t far from his parents’ home and had no need of a rest, he was here to put off the meeting.
He had read somewhere that the guns of HMS Belfast were trained on Watford Gap. He had no idea why, perhaps it symbolised those attempting to escape the capital. Still, he was not attempting an escape, he was heading towards his conflict, though that conflict was an escape of sorts.
Continue reading “The Naming of the Beasts by Matthew Roy Davey”
10:30, Sunday morning, 21 February 1970
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It was one of those little lost lamb spring days that sometimes wander into the dead of a Pacific Northwest winter. The sky was as clear as the devil’s conscience, and the temperature would reach well into the sixties by mid-afternoon. By and by, almost everyone in Charleston would go out to grab a piece of that little lost lamb spring day; for everyone knew it wouldn’t be long until another dreary storm blew in off Philo Bay.
Continue reading “A Condition of Absolute Reality by Leila Allison”
What is the most important quality that your Soulmate should possess?
It was not the first question, or the last. It was somewhere in the middle. I could look it up but you took my electronics. It’s only memory I can look to now, and we all know what a liar that motherfucker is.
Honesty.
Then the cloud of confusion left her face. I never felt the same about her afterward. It was as though I was a ghost, she saw and heard me even responded to me, but I seemed nothing more than a passing breeze to her.
“We launched the plant conservation study in an abandoned natural reservoir. Fields of sagebrush set against three icy active volcanos. And there I was, naked on the side of the dirt road. Covered in ticks. A poison oak rash burned up my waist. I had four wasp stings.”
Continue reading “A Small Succulent and an Octopus Pot by Anna Lewis.”
A course I’m taking at the University received the dubious distinction of being voted “least popular” last semester. The results were based on an algorithm formulated by a group of thoughtless students. I happened to be in Dr. Phillips’ presence when the unwelcome news appeared in front of him on his Feed. I immediately signed up; I felt bad for him. “Que sera sera,” he’d said, a phrase I’d found soothing. I didn’t know what it meant, of course, but it sounded lovely. I’d pulled the definition up on my Feed and it didn’t disappoint. The class, by the way, is called “Say What?: Speeches and Turns of Phrases from the 20th and 21st Centuries.”
I wish you wouldn’t go with him tonight. If you get caught…” Judith’s voice bounced off the yellowed porcelain tiles as she leaned closer to her sister at the counter in the ladies’ room. Judith stared at her own thin, chapped lips as Leda bared her teeth at her reflection in the chipped mirror and painted her lips a bright scarlet.
Bailey and I met two years ago. Since then, we’ve found comfort in quantity, since quality failed us before, and so many times. We found each other on the same platform we often fiddled with—two people fighting the conventions of monogamy at the time—fed up with a pattern of receiving the short end of the stick in previous partnerships.
Continue reading “Neither of Us Are Boyfriends by D.T. Mattingly”
literally stories 