We were watching a women’s bodybuilding competition on his 13” TV, my father and I in his studio apartment. A couple next door were going at it pretty good, and their bed kept banging against a common wall. My father waved a disapproving hand, said: “Animals!”
[Read more…] about OxalisA Game of Locked Out
By Aurora M. Lewis
There were five of them, the youngest in diapers pulled around in a red wagon, sometimes venturing to circle the block. That summer their beige skin baked to a toasty brown, their sandy hair a mass of curls, tangles, locked in dreads. Their father drove a pickup truck collecting junk, and their mother cleaned houses on the west side of town. So many children running amok until catching sight of their father’s faded blue truck.
[Read more…] about A Game of Locked OutFear Nothing
By Paul Negri
On vacation, Joe took Ellen and their little son Jackie on a private excursion to swim with the manatees. It was expensive, but Joe had had a good year selling industrial plastic wrap to companies in South America. The tour guide said that, at four years old, Jackie was at the perfect age to bond with nature, and there was nothing like a hands-on adventure with one of God’s most lovable creatures to do that.
[Read more…] about Fear NothingI Will Die in Miami in the Sun
By Christopher Seiji Berardino
I will die in Miami in the sun. I will wake early in the dark and carry my old lawn chair down to the beach. I will pass the old pastel houses with open front gates. I will shuffle in between the stalls on Biscayne where old Haitians chop fish heads with cleavers. They toss limp offal to alley cats that paw for scraps. I think to myself, this should be an oil painting.
[Read more…] about I Will Die in Miami in the SunDirigibles in the Belfry
By Leo Obrst
Once upon a time, there were dirigibles in the belfry. The owls hated being displaced. They flew into bats. The bats tried to hit all the balls in the world, which generated many oomphs until their sensibility changed. This was about three weeks later, when I was walking by the belfry for the first time in about three weeks and saw first-hand that the commotion had apparently ended. But how could I be sure? I couldn’t. I asked Alice whether she had noticed anything new in the neighborhood.
[Read more…] about Dirigibles in the BelfryEden
By Allison King
I keep a box of chocolate in my room and it is there that Kratos bolts the first time we bring him home. I named him after the archangel in my video game, the one with the fire sword, and when Kratos steps into our house, he is ablaze, his shining, red fur streaking to my room, the way car lights turn to beams in photographs. Later, the chocolate betrays him, and he throws up square lumps of brown on my pink carpet. When he is done hacking he sniffs, then gives a tentative lick.
[Read more…] about Eden