May 26. We limped out of the badlands at night. Las Vegas was a million screaming lights. The car almost crapped out at the halfway point, the fuel pump is shot. I was worried that we would break down in the desert and die of thirst. Sand would cover our bones and nobody would ever […]
Fiction
Julia Conover: The Voucher
“It’s Marge from accounting,” says the voice on the phone. “Oh, hi Marge.” I try to remember who Marge is. Is she the pudgy woman, about thirty-five, with the thin lips and grey-flecked sausage curls who stares at me in the elevator? Or the skinny redhead with pasty skin who always wears a Flyers jacket? […]
Eric D. Anderson: Strawberry
Hector came out of the gas station and saw that his date had driven off. Perhaps that’s it, he thought, perhaps it’s the Milky Way in my hand. Perhaps that’s the dealbreaker. Who eats these anyway, besides children? He stood on the curb and ran through the catalog of possibilities that could explain this development—a […]
Lisa Heiserman Perkins: Tanner’s First Deer
For five days running now, ever since I gave Tanner a 30-30 Winchester for his eighth birthday, my wife, Fleur, has been acting furious with me. I explained to her that all the Derochers got their first rifle when they turned eight, going back to when we lived in Perrier, France. Lately, because of the […]
Peter E. S. Nichols: America’s Oldest Living Published Poet
He had a reputation to uphold. There were two books of his poetry and a play, the latter still occasionally studied at a college or two. He’d survived to the age of ninety-four, so far. On the Maine island to which he and Eleasa relocated twenty years ago, they’d bought the defunct town library, and […]
Todd Jackson: The Story of Eugene, from the Nickel Gospels
A great number of attempts exist to capture the story of Nickel and the days of William St. I hold a bead on this also, but will for the first time, properly compile the story of these events, as they occurred correctly, from the start. During the days of the William St. Strip there was […]