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by Chris Dungey Zach Pence followed the older boy, Keith, down the hill out of the dead-end cul-de-sac. They turned a corner and marched toward the main street. He could see that there were more cars moving between the two traffic lights. One was a blinking yellow a couple of blocks away, the other a […]

by Rebecca Klassen   ‘You’re an anomaly,’ the checkout girl said. I thought I’d misheard the words that hadslipped from her coral-buttered lips. Perhaps she’d said, ‘I think you’re into me,’ or‘that’s four pound seventy.’‘Sorry, what?’ I bagged my eggs, wanting her phone number, and she pointedat my firefighter shirt.     ‘An anomaly. Running towards

by T.P. Bird “There is nothing insignificantin the world. It all depends onthe point of view.”—Goethe   A woman is cleaningthe inside of a glass door.At the end of her arm   is a white cloth—moving in circlesagainst the pane.   It‘s as if she is wavingto the world—eitherhello or goodbye.   As to which—is

by James Kangas Rickey’s Blues   Finally, it was laughable–how he left you in the theater like that,like a partnerless glove after he’d sat through fiveminutes of the movie, itching for a brewto suck down, a worked-up claque at his favorite dive.Magnet-eyed as he was, the littlemetal molecules in your body had jerkedyou across the

by Scott C. Holstad They closed the transient5th Avenue Motel and nowwhere will they go?The single mother withher two daughterseating cockroaches fromthe floor, hell, where willthe rats and roaches go?The city thinks it’sa drug infested blight,but Jack Neeley knowsits secret history, likelyonce a grand buildingnear Knoxville’s 4thand Gill district.They came from allover to stay for

by J. J. Steinfeld They connected online a bells-and-whistles dating service billed as ardour everlasting and companionship eternal she the world’s largest supermodel he the world’s smallest bodybuilder photographs exchanged touched up, enhanced even in their superlative incarnations that is, largest and smallest. Of the numerous headshots an expert on faces might say he was

by Gerard Sarnat  I’d never in eighty years done it this way                      that is, in old house, one floor hot and second not                      thus we now can avail ourselves of weather fits      

by Michael Mintrom I saw the four horsemen of the apocalypse drinking coffee on Church Street. Different from the paintings. No swords, no arrows, no scythe. No flamboyant sweeping above hay fields, smashed barns, chaos, death. Just old timers reminiscing about the rodeo. Their horse floats parked on vacant lots. Strange license plates. I knew

by Diana Raab Silence redux Unlike others in my past, your being is not one which hangs or hovers over me,   but you permeate and effuse my ethers, making a mark like leaky fountain pens   we shared during our second coffee, as we licked our tongues to chocolate covered ginger crystals,   glowing

by Paul Hostovsky Gray Day It’s the almost that I love about a gray day like today. In weather like this, I almost feel a kind of joy: the heavy sky, the feeling in the air of imminent release. I feel like I could almost cry. Cry as I haven’t since I was a boy.