James Joyce would have understood Amber in Fiona McGarvey’s Kenny Women. He would have understood the social circumstances of the ugliness that finds her as well as her lassitude toward it. Although the story is hard going, it is rewarding due to its honesty and the quiet strength of McGarvey’s prose.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Kenny Women by Fiona McGarvey”
Here we are at Week 340.
The year is flying by.
It won’t be long now to those dark endless days of the end of days.
Listen to me being all positive!
Continue reading “Week 340 – Legends Never Die, The Only Advert Worth Seeing And Alternative Words For Actual Events. (Allegedly)”
You know, sometimes people die because of inattention. That’s what happened to Zelda May Crawford, the community activist. Zelda was down on 7th and Broadway just a yakking away on her cell. Poor Baby stepped in front of the number 10 crosstown express bus. Splat! And that was that.
Continue reading “Dead Certain by Frederick K Foote”
He has come out of a dread silence and given himself a name; Saugus, he says. He bleats like a tethered goat to come out of that coming, to be away, dense spiral to the core of self, to the mountain call, bird arc across such slopes of pale imaginings.
Continue reading “A Salutation to My Saugus, Embassy of the 2nd Muse by Tom Sheehan”
Wattle’s life had a rough start. His mother died during childbirth, and his father was in Louisiana State Penitentiary. His first home was a run-down orphanage in New Orleans. At age fifteen, the institution closed, and he was thrust out to fend for himself. Wattle had learned many skills in survival, but he had never gone to school. So he enrolled in a state college on a paupers grant. After several years, he earned a bachelor’s degree and found work with a non-profit serving the homeless in Baton Rouge.
Continue reading “Wattle & Daub by Tim Hildebrandt”
Once, the coffee shop walls were sunshine yellow. It was a yellow that to Nick evoked the shape of sweet dreams. Dreams that whispered and took him by the hand. Dreams he couldn’t get facing white walls, six months ago. White walls that faced other white walls, with faceless neighbors who never made themselves known.
Continue reading “Welcome by Yash Seyedbagheri “
One day many years from now. Or wait.. Maybe it was many years ago? I guess it doesn’t very much matter.
Well, One day, a small creature not so old, yet also not so very young, its mottled furs pointing this way and that, its feet opened and sore, its body shivering, weak from its life’s long toils, cold from the inclement elements, but most of all hungry; so very hungry, hungry from days-
(Or was it years? Perhaps. That too does not much matter now.)
– without nourishment, came upon a beautiful tree.
Continue reading “The Apple by Simon Berling”
I’d rather that antlers grow in than have a child. Although it’s probably for the best that a person who has no children should feel that way, not everyone is so blessed. In an even more sinister conception, a combination of buyer’s remorse, potential Munchausen by proxy and our dear pals depression and fear drive this week’s rerun, The Thing by Dianne Willems. It is a simple tale of a complicated state of being, which I believe happens often, yet a shame enforced secrecy persists to the point of causing tragedy.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Thing by Dianne Willems”
Once upon a time, a rather ordinary boy walked into the kitchen, picked up the knife they used for cutting potatoes, and stabbed his mother 30 times.
It was actually closer to twelve but the more the story was told the more people added to it.
Continue reading “Seven by Ellie Jordan”
“How are you?” has been a constant question which she learned in a course of two weeks (maybe a year, maybe six). She wondered why they kept asking her that.
Continue reading “Cotard’s Delusion by Martie Carol Gonzales”
literally stories 