*Italicized sections from Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird” II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. In the city, I am never lonely. Riding the bus I feel the comfortable heft of the woman next to me, a total stranger, but our bodies touch […]
Fiction
Ryan Wilson: Maybelle’s Floral Aroma
The window is closed. I closed it. It’s not that I don’t want anyone to climb in. Or shout in. I do. I’m gregarious and handsome. Except for my nose, which is crooked and slightly too big for my face. Back to the window though; I’d love nothing more than for someone to climb in. […]
Phong Nguyen: Two-Step and Wannabe
New Years Eve 1979, 11:38 pm Frances and I stood with our legs pushing into the ground, all our fingers locked in a stalemate game of Mercy. In bowling shoes, our feet slid around the barroom floor like toboggans. I had the height advantage, so I pointed my toes and came at him from the […]
Robynne Graffam: The Big Bulldozer Parade
It was just about 8:30 on Sunday morning when Jackson called to say that J.D. Satrey had gone crazy and stolen the boss’ bulldozer. Well as you can imagine I nearly jumped clear out of my shoes. I was being extra careful with the breakfast dishes, on account of Mama yelling at me if I […]
Jason DeYoung: Summer
The boy had killed things before, but those things had died silently. The freshly shot robin flopped and screamed. Its frantic presence was a bluster of dark feathers and incongruous shapes bouncing off the red-clay dirt. —Lie, breathing—then dancing absurdly again. —It cried in shrill squawks. Nothing else the boy had killed before had made […]
Peter Basson: The Fishpond
In the kitchen brother and I silently watch her work. We wonder if she’ll let us run our fingers across the smooth interior of her mixing bowl, suck the sticky sweet batter from our fingertips. She stirs in powdered sugar, stern in her apron, adding vanilla like magical elixir, tapping out each precious drop with […]