Author Archives: Dale

A Losing Game by Howie Good

You should invest in failing, invest in losing, move around like a fish, searching for possibilities. You should create a room to get lost in, a room with what is billed as “the worst view in the world.” Do you see the donut? Do you just see the hole? But if you see the hole, […]

Black Dress by Kenneth Pobo

My Aunt Maggie, whom we called Aunt Saggy, because she sagged and we were mouthy kids, came to birthday parties, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, saying almost nothing, keeping her beige purse close to her legs. Mom only invited her out of pity. “She’s got no one. And a police record. When she worked for that rich […]

Wrong Turns by Kyle Hemmings

I didn’t get a good look at the cab driver’s face at first. I gave him the address where my ex-girlfriend lives, the one I’ve been stalking for weeks after she dumped me like a bag of stale potato chips. I was planning for another confrontation and this time I wouldn’t be at a loss […]

Hard Like That by Monica Flegg

At first, we closed only the screen door which allowed air, breath and feelings to sift through. My heart was root bound. Shoots slid under the screen, across the mossy threshold—stretching back to you. The storm door needed to be closed. We shut it slowly like an ice cube watering an orchid. I turned the […]

Still by Paul Beckman

The fog rolled in and settled a few feet off the ground rising up ten feet or more. The tree trunks were covered as were the cars left where they were because the governor forbade any driving. People walked in and out of the fog and they, like the buildings and trees, turned sepia colored from […]

On Pets and Sharp Objects by Thuy Dinh

Her mother’s hen was named Lucky. Lucky wasn’t lucky. Her grandmother killed Lucky on the eve of their evacuation from the country to the city. She urged, “We should eat Lucky. He was our friend. Now we need him for food.” On the eve of their evacuation from the country to the city, her mother, then […]

It’s the Fourth of July by Ken Craft

and he’s listening to Oh Say Can You See in a sea of runners and an awakening 8 a.m. heat. The blue smell of Ben-Gay on the mentholated old guys & Axe on the sun-venerating young guys & armpit on the just-rolled-out-of-bed lazy guys & no one’s run a New Balance step yet. The ellipsis […]

Building Walls by Glen Sorestad

with apologies to Frost and Sandburg I live on the northern side of a border that could become a wall—the longest undefended boundary in the world between two countries. Saner heads will prevail, I keep telling myself, because one of America’s notable poets mused, Something there is / that doesn’t love a wall. Indeed, he […]

45 (Episode 1) by Cindy Hochman

In the room the women come and go / talking of Michelangelo —T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” The jokers are wild! The king has misplaced democracy somewhere, maybe next to his eyeglasses, also lost. The bum in the leather jacket seethes and huffs, and threatens to blow the House down, along […]

An Honest Apocalypse by Jane Flett

1. I had a dream it was 9/11, but instead of planes there were great pumpkins drifting across the sky. They’d warned us, but what can you do about that, really, we asked? What can you ever really do about anything? 2. This time, the dream got into my computer. A virus! All the keys […]

Po-dunk by Laura Page

I told him I couldn’t live there. It seemed so grey, a too-long strip of highway lined with used car dealerships, pay-day loans offices, the Lombard pawn crests in neon, on backlit starboard sign panels. Po-dunk as my girlfriend used to say of the cheap jars of alfredo I used to buy at the Red […]

Resistance by Mark Renney

I make my way through a labyrinthine network of paths and alleyways. The blocks of flats are identical and even the decay is uniform; peeling paint on the weathered boards, rusty stains on the bricks from the leaking gutters, the graffiti repeating itself, the same tags and faded colours. Most of the shops I pass […]

[phone, keys, cigarettes, wallet] by Reed Karsh

healthier, happier, more secure, no longer frightened of the mornings, finding passion in supply chain management, daily bread, a thumbs up, avoid stepping on shattered Old English, gym membership for one dollar down, on sale, heart not beating too fast, waking up early to walk the dog, silent and motionless through the wake, a breakfast […]

In the Light, I See… by Santino Prinzi

…You. You’re in the strip of light that bleaches my carpet a lighter shade of magnolia. My feeble curtains can’t block you out. If I lay on the floor, you’re in my reach—that is, if I wanted to touch you. And I don’t, even though I know you’ll feel warm—warmer than I remember—and that’s why […]

The Outlet by Bob Conklin

There is only one outlet in the room, down by the baseboards. Millicent sits in a corner, smoking a cigarette, tapping the ash from time to time in a Styrofoam cup half-filled with lukewarm coffee from the night before. She looks through a back issue of Glamour, studying the cosmetic ads. Luke watches television, a […]

Trip by Vivian Wagner

The mushrooms spoke to me. I’m sure of that. They told me they grew from spores left here by aliens. They told me that through them I could connect to other worlds, to other forms of consciousness. They told me they were aliens themselves, rooted in earth’s soil, that they were sentient and could talk to […]

Sirens by C.B. Auder

When a silken vision slinks on a mission down the sidewalk of a car-choked street—when her waves swish and bob in the unbearable heat—all you know is one thing: you will follow. Above the hot-dog grime and the blitz of van blats and the millions of pencil-lives grinding in trickle-up sharpeners, you feel this: tomorrow […]

Commuter, 1993 by Kyle Potvin

I sip coffee with the desire of morning. The morning news is fresh and black on my fingers. The pressed edge of the suit coat belongs to the stranger beside me. Pressed against me like a shield, he bobs his head on my shoulder. Shouldering this weight, I shift my legs beneath my skirt, moving […]