Fiction

Probability and Grace

By Joseph Auslander

Port Washington has a handful of classy bars that attract a clientele of wealth and distinction. They create an environment not unlike being in a GAP, Banana Republic or Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. People garnished in ‘just bought’ clothes displaying their ‘just cut’ hair and indulging in their ‘just poured’ drinks. This is not one of those bars.

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Canyons

By David Cotrone

“Jonah… Jonah… what are you doing in there?” Mom yells.
+++++“Give me a minute Mom,” I say, “Jesus.”
+++++“What are you doing, touching yourself?”

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Pedigree

By Daniel Davis

I was just getting ready to go out and mow the backyard when Emily hollered for me to come out front.
+++++I could tell by her tone that it wasn’t urgent, so I stopped to take off my gardening gloves—the vibrations of the mower have the tendency to cause blisters—and set them on the dining room table on my way through the house. The front door was open, with the screen door latched firmly in place; when I reached it I paused, stunned to see Caesar, Dominick Perdieu’s standard poodle.

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Over the Top

By Max Dunbar

In his dream he was on the wrong train and ended up in a part of the city he’d never been before, ran into Dee Halstone who was with Trent Ferdinand and a few other guys and after a coupla beers in a coupla pubs they were running through the streets, music booming from somewhere, the chant rose up from Trent in his wheelchair: THIS IS ROCK AND ROLL! THIS IS ROCK AND ROLL!

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Follow Tomorrow

By Alan Gillespie

Eugene Findlay, guest of His Majesty’s, prisoner number NM9409, smuggled a pen into the security vehicle and punctured the guard’s forearm three times before wriggling free and slipping into the woods by the road.

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Seek Alternative Route

By Simon Kewin

Buckley thumped his steering wheel in frustration. Ahead, the motorway was a bank of red lights as the traffic in all three lanes braked to a halt. He had been cruising comfortably at eighty, plenty of time to get to the meeting, and now this. A red triangle lit up on his SatNav. Congestion it said underneath. Seek alternative route.

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Heavy Water

By Kirsty Neary

The pool lies quiet, a slick of liquid oxygen for those in need of its restorative powers. She lies on the tiles alongside, digging fingers, then toes, into the herringbone guttering. Water down there, too. Dirty.

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RSVP

By Nathan Pensky

Perry drummed the steering wheel with the side of his thumb, staring ahead at the wedge of illumined asphalt, the trunks of Fir that flitted by on either side and the farther darkness where the headlights didn’t reach. The only sound was the car heater and wind against the car windows.

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One Summer, Sonya and I

By Bobby Pfeiffer

Sonya ran out of the house with a yell, trotted down the wooden steps and jumped towards me. Her sudden arrival startled the whole world, dispersed the silence, and made the chickens nervous in the vegetable garden where they dug the soil for slugs and worms, casually destroying the neat lettuce rows in the process. The dog woke up, gave a confused bark, and fell asleep again almost immediately. I was suddenly aware how high the sun had climbed since I first sat cross-legged on the front yard stones with my toy figures faithfully grouped around me.

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Children of Mother Earth

By Gary Sprague

The trail ended in a huge clearing. The first thing I saw was the old school bus. It was difficult to miss, with a psychedelic paint job standing out against the green mountain forest. The words Love Mobile were written in bubble letters on the hood.

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Suicide Draft

By Nathaniel Tower

“Excuse me, Professor Robbins, can you look this over for me?” Randy Timmons spoke rather timidly, clearing his wavering throat twice and keeping his soft brown eyes aimed at the hideous orange rug covering the professor’s office floor.
+++++“Sure thing…” Professor Robbins said, also avoiding eye contact as he trailed off in a way that would have made it clear to Randy that the wise, old man didn’t know his name, that is, if Randy hadn’t had much bigger things on his mind.

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Flash Fiction

A Royal Romance

By Michael Q. Black

The doorbell always rings twice. I get up from the leather couch, still snug in my pyjamas, and look through the peephole. It’s her. I’m peeping. My heart is leaping. I must do away with this barrier between us!

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Human Interest

By Les Brookes

We found him on a bench by the river. Lovely morning. Prince bounded up, kissed his hand. He lifted a worn face, scratched a nose ring, thumped a clogged chest. Sleeping rough, you could tell.

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Violence

By Travis Claeys

…day the man buried his family and neighbors in the sand and promised his revenge. One day later he found the ones who would help him and was strapped with bombs across his chest. A detonator was placed in his hand.

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Trans World

By Sonja Condit Coppenbarger

When I was nine and my sister Julie was seven, our parents sent us from London to Los Angeles. We were to fly halfway around the world by ourselves – simple enough, no layovers and no transfers. We would step onto the airplane at Heathrow and off at LAX.

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Primogeniture

By Kirsty Logan

As the stitches stretch wider I see flesh behind them: shiny, pink, seashell-ridged. I go to the doctors with my belly held in my hands, shoes slipping against the rain-wet pavements. They peer inside me with long thin torches and use bigger needles. The stitches start thick as prison bars, but as they stretch they thin to string.

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Prose Poetry

Performance

By Vikki Gemmell

I can feel it. The heat rising from the audience beyond the curtains. The artificial smoke curling up, crawling across the stage, circling my ankles, pulling at me to hurry up. We want to see you. Hurry up and perform for us.

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Skinless Night

By Dylan Gilbert

We’re surrounded by darkness and opium is in the air – just breathing it in, the balmy Manhattan night, creates a floating feeling contrary to dizziness. Backs propped against the asphalt slant at the edge of the roof, merging into the vast skyline. 46th Street bustling below, but me and Leila in solitude with the upper city, lit up and dream-like.

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Sweetwater Seasons

By Ron Koppelberger

Katherine Sunday twisted and turned the handle as the gray bucket dipped lower and lower into the well. She was clothed and sorted by the fortunes of the Sunday legacy, lace edges and tresses of flame.

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Memory of William Stafford

By Keith Moul

(“Follow the golden thread”)

Bill read to us in 1975.
Each poem was more comfortable than the last.
We held our applause as the genial poet
massaged our thoughts for hours.

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It was a relapse…

By Gloria O’Byrne

It was a relapse, replay, redundant, revolting. She (me) sitting there in the diner out in the middle of the desert drinking coffee and eating a muffin, waiting for the laundry a few feet away, he (him, you know the one everyone loves) glaring at me. Like “what the f… are you here for?”

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Charity Box

By Claire Trévien

The fourth wall is glass stained with a nautical spelling of Hervé. That underused V a cross, crimson on the colourless flag; the birds of the sea slither by the ropes crying blue lines.

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Nonfiction

A Potted Lecture on Symbols and Creative Writing

By William Fisher

A major difference (some would say the major difference) between man and the rest of the animal kingdom is our ability to symbolise. By this I mean the capacity to take object ‘A’ and make it stand for object ‘B’ without there being a natural connection between the two.

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The Prince

By Eric G. Müller

Next, I was scheduled to play against the Prince in the Equator Ping-Pong championships. I’d already made it to the third round, having beaten my two previous opponents with ease. To make sure, I rechecked the bulletin board. There it was – printed neatly on the roster with a black marker: Prince of Lichtenstein.

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The Hospital in Hudson, New York

By Matthew Zanoni Müller

Halfway through my senior year of college, just at the end of 2006, I had to have knee surgery. I felt something crack inside my knee one day as I was getting out of my friend’s car. It took three days before I could walk somewhat normally.

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