A four foot hypodermic needle isn’t a harpoon, but I’ll allow that the optics aren’t good. It is more delicate than a harpoon, though, and harder to get in and out of a Coast Guard helicopter. On a good-weather day we could travel to the small island by boat, but today we have to dart […]
Fiction
Ronald Jackson: Schoolhouse in the Woods
Aunt Tourelaine and Uncle Delbert wake me at 8 o’clock to break it to me, so I can break it to the girls, but I put on my blue jeans and red baseball jersey, run out the house without telling, run hard into hot August, through our woods and across the McGonagall farm, push past […]
Kiprop Kimutai: Dark Well
A beastly cry tore the morning silence. Kurui’s hand froze on the bookcase in the living room. He walked outside, with his face unwashed, and still dressed in the faded black polo shirt and grey flannel trousers he had slept in. He stood for a while on the square, earthen depression surrounding the house and […]
Cónal Creedon: Dockets and Dowels
Like my grandda and my grandda’s da, my dad was a cabinetmaker, a master craftsman. The lads up in Mulla’s Yard said he was a genius; he could make a full piece of furniture, no nails or screws used. I swear to God, you can never really know what goes on in another man’s head, […]
Tanuj Solanki: The Desire of the Detective
(1) November: the month when Bombay breeze turns cool and longing has narcotic ripples. From the sliding window of my fourth floor apartment, I see a big grey cloud hanging in the evening sky. I hear traffic gurgling sporadically on the road below. The crime begins a conversation with me. A dead man with a […]
Cameron MacKenzie: I Don’t Know What Else I Can Do For You
The kid was small, not quite 100 pounds. Closer to 90. They didn’t know his name and they didn’t know his grade but they knew he’d been about 20 minutes late to practice. Coach said they should run him, and he gave them the superball. Coach watched practice every day from up against the far […]