Clinical by Rick Bailey
The spring I turned nineteen I took child psych at the local college. It was my second psych class, taught late in the afternoon by a real world psychologist named Norval Dirksen. He wore ill-fitting...
View Article… and I Awoke, Dazed, in a Pool of my Own Sweat by Pearl
By the time I reach home, the TV has worked itself into a righteous, vigorous anger. Apparently word has reached it – and I’m not blaming anyone specific here but I do strongly suspect my laptop, a...
View ArticleThe Quarry by James Stolen
“-but I figure you’re still at school. Thought I should tell you how it all went though. Better than I thought it would after all of these years. There was a group of us down at the quarry like I said....
View ArticleRoissy I by George Michelsen Foy
This airport is made of glass and angles which let me see the sun. I am grateful to the airport for that. The airplanes see the sun, they run to it and then rise the way storks do. But jets fight...
View ArticleGlasses by Geoffrey Miller
When someone visits my house for the first time, it comes up, usually not right away but it comes up. The last time someone asked about that photograph was different though because she’d been over for...
View ArticlePoisoned by Lori Schafer
“Tell them what you gave me, sweetheart,” she prompted encouragingly, referring, perhaps, to a pair of earrings, a bouquet of flowers. “What I gave you?” he replied, puzzled. Lately she often said and...
View ArticleAnachronism by Stephen Mander
When I grow up I’m going to be an astronaut and I’m going to fly into space and around the earth and visit the moon and the planets and the stars and maybe the sun. I’m going to fly in a great big ship...
View ArticleSymmetry by Klarissa Fitzpatrick
We planned the house ourselves, glad to have our own project after the maternal pressure system of our wedding. We saw the rocks one afternoon on vacation — one of the many weekend trips we took so we...
View ArticleThe Artist by Ken Poyner
The family brings out its dead child, wrapped in a blanket not so old it makes the family look poor, nor so new its potential loss would make the family poorer. It is the eighth child this month. In...
View ArticleGrommets! by Wayne Cresser
My husband Alan was broiling. Home for the month of August after teaching summer courses, he’d been watching our neighbors’ yard like he was paid security. For days, he’d been giving me play by play....
View ArticleNames by Autumn Keiss
She stood facing the jungle gym, her thin body casting a skinny shadow onto the blue bars and the red plastic pieces that connected them. They stood there for several minutes: the young girl, breathing...
View ArticleThe Accident by Shawna Mayer
Lila picked up the onesie, but then let it fall back on the table with the rest of the unfolded laundry. Then she decided to walk through the door again. She’d been in fifteen minutes before, saw her...
View ArticleBoxcars Burning by Al Lyons
It had been unbearably hot for days, even with the fans on and the windows wide open. No sign of it letting up. We played cards in the bunk house, drinking warm beer, complaining about the heat, and...
View ArticleFlorida Sighting by Sheree Shatsky
The pickup pulls into the rural gas station as I top off my tank. The driver steps from the truck, his Stetson tipped back to better study the fuel prices. The passenger side swings wide to reveal a...
View ArticleA Good Neighborhood by Lucia Cherciu
A couple of used baby clothes with no rips. An unworn pair of green boots made of shining fake leather, with incredibly high heels. An old fur hat with flaps that buttoned under the chin. The girl...
View ArticleOld Memories by Wayne Scheer
I’m eating at this crummy cafe, wondering about the age of the mushrooms in my omelet, when I see this waitress who looks remarkably like… whatshername? The woman from the bar at the hotel I stayed at...
View ArticleNo Postcards for a Drifting Address by Siddhartha Choudhury
Though she rushed out the door as quietly as possible, he had caught a glimpse of her. So he wailed. The few seconds of her departure stretched into minutes in his mind, and his loud cry found her...
View ArticleGrand Prix by Ray Scanlon
On their first bikes without training wheels, my twin granddaughters raced each other down the street, shouting, pedaling like maniacs, their hair and fluorescent handlebar streamers alive and flying...
View ArticleThe Straw I Grasp at to Break the Camel’s Back by Michael Power
There is a straw – a girl, really – that I grasp at vainly. Very vainly. I stare in the mirror and think I’m beautiful as I grasp. She’s a straw that I know I’ll never wrap my lips around and suck on....
View ArticleHer Boyfriend’s Family Album by Stephen Mander
This is Andy, his cousin, though you don’t know that. You can only see the gelled up hair he’s had since he was fourteen, because he still thinks he’s fourteen, even though he’s at university, failing...
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