PUBLIC TRANSIT • Nathan Greene
AYE MIO AMICO, who could say a train is not the most beautiful class of vehicle? She come this one from the mountains, where still some snow shows on her roof. Step up with me on the bell and compare… Continue Reading
PARK ANYWHERE YOU LIKE • Gregory Meece
“The Creekside Planning Commission is now open for public comment.” Feeling proud of my civic-mindedness, I stepped up to the microphone. While my topic wasn’t as critical as reducing taxes or preventing crime, it was something I believed deserved attention.… Continue Reading
RABBIT TEETH • Emma Johnson Tarp
My date is burly and gruff, a lumberjack squeezed into a French blue polo and wing-tips. He fumbles through the menu with giant hands. A white scar cuts from his left nostril down to his upper lip. He notices me… Continue Reading
SEVENTEEN MINUTES • Lily Hunger
It only takes seventeen minutes to realize that lifeguarding was not the career for me. Seventeen minutes. It isn’t the 5:15 AM alarm that did it. Or the gross vacuum I have to hook and drag out of the pool.… Continue Reading
THE GOOD NEIGHBOR • James M. Maskell
Bugs and spiders scatter as he tugs open the creaking, wooden bulkhead doors and peers down into the darkness. “There’s a light at the bottom of the stairs,” she tells him. “Just feel for the string and give it a… Continue Reading
FESTER • Elizabeth Cox
There were scales in the bathroom. Shell looked to the two blue towels already hanging with their limb-shaped patches of damp. Her dad and stepmother had had their showers already, and Shell felt two speeds in her heart. They had… Continue Reading
WARMING THE COCKLES • Ruth Gilchrist
Friday night should have been disco night, but my footballer boyfriend decided it was break up night instead. Saturday morning Cockle picking with Joy. Head bent sifting those white shells from the mud, tears weren’t much use. It didn’t feel… Continue Reading
RESPECT • Michael Neal Norris
Her father, gulping his whisky, insisted the three puppies remain outside because “there is nothing cute about stepping in shit.” No one in the neighborhood saw the mother of the tiny dogs and most presumed she was dead. Some saw… Continue Reading
THE INTERPRETERS • Neil Weiner
Spraying machine gun bullets lit up the hillside as Zhang dodged behind a rock to protect himself. His foe, the American 49th division, was fighting north of what would be later the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). He had been drafted as… Continue Reading
RETURN TO SENDER • Matthew Hernandez
After our closing, mail intended for the prior owners continued to arrive. At my wife’s suggestion, we hand printed “return to sender” and dropped the letters in the blue collection box near the Panera. The junk—the flyers, directories, advertisements—we tossed.… Continue Reading