Despite what the newspaper said, O’Malley knew the true cause of the accident. Inside the trolley, in the periphery of his consciousness and beyond his recognition, an image had formed of this sort of duck, a white sort of duck whose everything that should have been yellow was instead a pale pink like a young […]
Fiction
Nell Joslin: The Lesson
A child stood alone in the large foyer of a high-ceilinged home, chewing a lock of her hair. She was wearing a winter coat with the hood tied under her chin. On the floor beside her she had dropped several leaves of sheet music. Leading off of the foyer were French doors whose panes were […]
E.A. Durden: In the Prison Garden
First the German prisoner promised her carnations. “What color do you like?” he said. His English was passable. He showed too many teeth. He had no business smiling at an old maid. “Can you sign for this?” Edith said, and held out her clipboard. She was delivering bread from her family’s bakery to the prison […]
Gina Bruno: On the Phone
From my bedroom I heard a thick wad of papers slap the linoleum floor in our kitchen. My mom’s voice followed, a hiss-scream that said, “This fucking country.” It was a crisp October afternoon and my mom had just come home to a letter from United States Immigration. I looked across the space that separated […]
Sean Beaudoin: The Show
Things really pick up after Ukezie transfers to West Boylston. Suddenly Coach is like RUN, and instead of half-assing around the bleachers, we RUN RUN RUN. Then Coach goes JUMP, and instead of hands-in-sweatpants, we JUMP JUMP JUMP, still a good ten feet behind Ukezie, who goes through every drill like buttering toast. The first […]
Aaron Landsman: Lysis
At 11½, while the boys around me were turning muscled and thick voiced, I stayed knock-kneed. Whenever I spoke, a battle raged in my throat between the forces of alto and bass, with neither side able to claim victory for long. My father the Philosophy professor was my best friend. We lived together on Maple […]