First, there is the long—still—opening—shot—of freeway traffic outside my office window, flowing in one direction, heavy, and menacing, and gray, like flood debris carried on a strong current through the central business district. Over this, a white expanse of sterile sky dreaming in the color blue. The scene speaks to us all of the human […]
Fiction
Moon Garden by Suzanne Richardson
It was the summer Nan turned eight that she and her father had planted the moon garden at their holiday home in Oxfordshire. Her father, a history professor at Oxford during the year, but an avid horticultural hobbyist, happened to read about the art of medieval Japanese nocturnal gardens in April. By May, he decided […]
Feral by Deena Metzger
The moment it first occurred to the woman that she would bring the girl home was when the girl had climbed to a sturdy branch halfway up the sycamore and ensconced herself there, first removing, then dropping, her yellow leather work boots and then her socks, stretched out like lilies at their tops, fluorescent lime […]
How the Dead Are Buried by Gerard Marconi
In the summer following their freshman year of high school, Tommy and Iggy were lying out at the Patterson Park pool on their stomachs to hide the boners they got from watching the girls go by. Tommy closed his eyes, the hot sun beating down on his back. He listened to the shouts of children […]
Sob Stories by WinLo333
I’m up at 5:00 sharp every morning, work till my clock dings at 9:30, and then it’s off to the Pond. That’s where I like to run, but you need a resident sticker to park out there, so I park at the grocery store lot and then jog over. When I pulled in yesterday, at […]
COLD JUNE by Francine Witte
The coldest on record. Here in Maine, temps of teens and twenties becoming the norm. Mavis Farnsworth in a pine green sweater. Makes her look like Christmas, her husband, Tom, says. “I’d sure like to unwrap you,” he adds with a twinkle. She bakes him sugar cookies instead. He turns on the little TV, all black […]
BLACKTOP EDEN by Jordan A. Rothacker
It was their dream come true, blacktop earth, sprawling six square miles of it. Their paradise. They paid for acres, but no one could remember how many, and they couldn’t measure that way anyway. From the center, where Suzy and Amerasian Lilly set their tent, you could look out three miles in each direction, and […]
LUCKY’S SOLILOQUY by Robert Loss
One afternoon I couldn’t think straight. I’d just come home and dropped my valise on the hardwood floor when I realized that I’d forgotten to wipe my snowy, muddy shoes on the rough rug in the kitchen. I thought of the rug in that way: “rough.” In what way could a rug be “rough,” I […]
HOW BIG IS MATTHEW? by David Cody
The people closest to Bill Crutchlow seemed to be developing interests and relationships that he never would have foreseen even a year ago, and that ran entirely counter to his aspirations for them. His wife, Mary, an English teacher who had given up her profession to stay home and raise her children, had started selling […]
THE FARMER’S TREATY by Jeremy D. Campbell
I. The mule’s a stubborn son of a bitch. It refuses to carry him any farther, so he dismounts and walks it over the lawn to the large barn where he ties it to a nearby post. The grass of the lawn is a healthy green. He glances at the porch, but no one has […]
