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 […]
Contributors 77
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 […]
Anne Harding Woodworth: Bess and the Professor or Sexual Harassment Was Much Funnier in the Old Days
In his office the ruddy face sweeps down white lips to hers stubble-white chin coming in at an angle white hair over white brows over white lashes blue eyes narrowing from pecked corners years of years lips of lips Mr. Fisher’s wrinkled lips under the white mustache between creases and his tongue between teeth. That […]
Ely Shipley: Glass
A disco ball gleams, an eye of God, and I’m reflected thousands of times, tiny in squares until I can’t breathe, drowning in the sounds of bass I mistake for my heart. The other dancers – my shadows, come closer to, then farther from me, sprayed out in the strobe lights, pressing me in and […]
Nicholas Reading: The Jazz Kitchen
This kid finishes his first night of washing dishes and steak knives when he hangs the apron and walks into a room with short ceilings and long, very long legs. He comes up to their waists. His image of the blues pales in this gray. Cigarettes are tongues flicked and ashed over. Louise Misha, he […]
Luis Nieto Miranda: Romance de la Barbaracha
(A Rafael, a Juan, a Víctor, al Sr. Conde, al Cholo, al Caballero, al Glorioso, al Pisquito, al Borracho y a K’allata, mis amigos.) Chola que te quiero chola más fresca que una manzana, con tu pollera redonda y tu blusa de percala. Te brilla limpia la risa como el cristal de la escarcha. Tus […]