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Backspace by Santino Prinzi

Frustrations typed, vented, deleted unposted. I type fears and hopes on Twitter, and suppress it, gone – no retweets, no favourites. Facebook is the better place for longer outpourings except the...

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Anonymous by Roberto Carcache Flores

It was my first Thanksgiving abroad. Even the rowdy Spanish tennis players from my dorm had been invited to spend the holidays in a home. My initial instinct was to travel somewhere remote, gray, an...

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Female Game Show Contestants by Denis Bell

I love to watch TV game shows. Always have. The long running show Hedge Your Bets is a nightly ritual in my household. My wife and I have watched the show just about every night of our married life and...

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Showdown in Silicon Alley by Mark Crimmins

We file into a conference room for the weekly meeting. Peter Mathson is going to present us with the new org chart. For the next software release there’ll be a bit of a reshuffle. Bert Pascal sits...

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Everyone Is Looking at You by Mark Baldyga

You’re not the type of person to go to poetry readings, but tonight you came anyway. Now you’re sitting here, in this café, on this stool, looking for something. The next line to your poem. How does it...

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Childhood Memories by Carroll Susco

I was alone in the house when the electricity went off.  It was very  dark.  Hurricane Agnes.  I was eight.  In the basement of what was a two-story Duke, the model name.  My mother moved us every five...

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All Costs by Geoff Peck

You’re in a dusty bar in western Oklahoma, an outpost at the edge of the Cross Timbers, where the flora turns sparse and freckles the red dirt like an archipelago.  The pumpjacks appear as naturally as...

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Flight by Roxanne Doty

Dale Nelson takes his kids out to Kansas City International airport on Sunday afternoons while his wife works at Katz drugstore downtown.  The boy is eight, the girl four.  He likes to watch planes...

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Tono by James Guthrie

“Umm. . .” he said, eventually. “Hmm?” “Sorry, my uh. . . my legs, they’re. . . I can’t feel them anymore.” “Oh.” “Can we shift this a little?” “Sure.” “Sorry they’re. . . totally numb.” She put the...

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Off to See the Wizard by Wayne Scheer

In grade school, Joyce was the good little girl with the starched white blouse sitting in front of the room.  But in her mind, she was like Tonya who sat in the back whispering with the bad boys. In...

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Street Pizza by Mark Antony Rossi

If your sister only knew the animals she loves are not too bright and often head first for my speeding sedan where their tender bodies are crushed into a thick red paste erupting through a furry matted...

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The Lilacs by Kimberly Zook

During their final year of marriage, Maddie set the yard on fire. The lilacs, having bloomed late that May in ’44, banked the clothesline that bore the twins’ cloth diapers, her stained nightgown, and...

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Weathering by Ken Poyner

The barrel of the pistol presses into my temple and I can feel the anger in the hand that holds it.  The barrel does not touch my temple:  it seeks to enter, it pushes the scant skin found there into...

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VIRGIN by Toti O’Brien

“You obey too literally what I say,” he stated, commenting on our inability to get together, do things together, spend time together. Was he asking for more initiative on my side? Was he asking for me...

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Turkey by Denis Bell

She promised to baste you today, but here you are almost done and she still hasn’t arrived. She visits you often now. Usually before noon, for she has business to conduct in the afternoon and she likes...

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Landmark by Chad Greene

We’re having a hard time understanding each other. The two walkie-talkies we purchased at Radio Shack, so we could communicate between our separate cars in remote areas without cell coverage during our...

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Black Swan by Ken Head

Gare d’Austerlitz.  Monday morning, eight o’clock.  The overnight from Barcelona pulls in on time. He stares out of the compartment window as if he needs to memorize the scene.  It’s raining hard and...

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Ascension by Robert Fisher

Six weeks into a brutal ten-week winter tour of the Midwest, he checks into the Fargo Travel Lodge. The roads are beginning to ice up. He took the bus from Madison, timing his arrival so he could grab...

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Baby, Baby, Baby by Paul Beckman

“Can’t you shut the baby up?” “Baby is our daughter and maybe if you held or rocked her or even sang to her she’d stop crying.” “Why don’t you do it?” “I do it all the time. Can’t you see I’m using the...

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The Good Deacon by Jeff Ferry

Deacon Gordon Lavoy walked into the Shore City Market with long, purposeful strides and grabbed a basket.  There was a nearly palpable crackle of energy as every eye in the market followed the Deacon’s...

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