it’s early June twilight, the bats just now coming out and they stand awkwardly on the gravel of the driveway, crunching it back staring up at the little creatures that flail about until Henry asks Clyde what he wants, which is natural enough but said in a little punk tone that Clyde wants to slap out of his mouth
Fiction
Awkward Little Creatures that Flail About, 1956
“Your Eyes In the Darkness”
A Review of Rick White’s Talking to Ghosts at Parties
by Chase Erwin
White drags the reader, as if by the collar, through moments in time and space that reflect and refract each other, both literally and thematically.
In the Kingdom of Toads & Bones
by Rick White
– CONTENT WARNING: Animal Abuse –
In the mornings — before school — there was always tea. China cups, whistling kettle, hot metal stove. Warm smell of butane, blackened matches, crunch of buttered things. Now there is only steam. It pools on every surface and spit-trickles down black windowpanes, shiny tears.
Winter by Jasna Dimitrijević
translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
Since I moved away to a bigger city, I seldom come back home. Only for holidays and the anniversaries of a few people’s deaths.
Islands by Elena Varvello,
translated from the Italian by Jennifer Panek
On dark days, days when she thought there was really nothing important to be done, she had the impression that for women like herself, the world might just keep shrinking down until it was small enough to fit into a shopping list. And then everything would seem to contract, to the point where she couldn’t breathe any more, as if the walls and the ceiling were closing in on her…
Command Hook
by Thomas Mixon
There’s nothing less than a relationship at stake, when one opens a package of LED white star lights on green wire from Target, and another opens an identical package, and both get frustrated trying to untangle the strings.
Every Kind of Woman
by Kristine Morgan
The first casting call was a genesis. I’m sure of it now. I walked into a warehouse on the southeast side of town.
Fountain of the Dying
by Austin Sanchez-Moran
On a whitewashed island in Greece, where the brass church bells chime out into the sea
every evening, there is a slender old woman in a red head scarf who yells out, “Soup! A scoop of
soup!” while banging her tin drum with a ladle and wandering the cobblestoned alleyways.
Extract from X by Valentina Mira
translated from the Italian by Sean McDonagh
When it’s my turn to sleep, I dream of a wolf. It follows me around the rooms of the house. I have no idea what it wants with me, nor who is hiding beneath that fur. I wake up with my heart beating in its ribcage; it’s weird, it seems almost like it intends to take flight as if it were a hummingbird. And unfortunately, it’s a heart instead.
Shit Cassandra Saw: A Unique and Thrilling Debut
by Angelina Mazza
“Women can never be emancipated from the stupidity of men.” For MAYDAY, Angelina Mazza reviews Gwen E. Kirby’s remarkable, dark, biting feminist project, Shit Cassandra Saw.
