Daniel Bartkowiak

Daniel Bartkowiak is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago. His work has been featured in issues of Thrice Literary, The Write Launch, Free Spirit, and Allium. He is 27 years old.

Quantitative Unease

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Hi. My name = Aioli McCoy. And, first things first, I think this is stupid. And by this, I mean you. Diary. Journal. Thingamajig. Honestly? I’m only writing to make Pauleen (wife) happy. Due to, earlier, when I came home from work, she sat me down, put on serious face like she had big news to share, then handed me this black moleskin.
  • Issue 83, May 2024
  • Long Short Story
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The Monster Mash

Rain drips from the awning, the constant patter, late December up north you get snow, late December down south you get rain. Strings of red and green bulbs hang zig-zagged over the dark and puddled road. Think fog and mist and shadows. Think gaseous orange sky and shrill nameless voices and the strange feeling, because it’s a feeling after all, not a thought nor a string of contemplation, but a feeling of imminence cast out by the damp air and prickling the skin’s hairs; a foreboding,…
  • Issue 20, December 2018
  • Novella
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Ventilator Blues

Beyond the tracks and rising erumpent from the swallows of the Mississippi are two Maple trees which he watches alone and with a face not older than the trees but one of a similar mold. He pulls out a red lighter and a pack of Lucky Strikes from his leather jacket. He spins the wheel twice before the flame emerges, an orange haze in the gray evening.
  • Issue 17, September 2018
  • Short Story
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A Very Fine Time

They were sitting alone on the white sand. Everyone else had gone to bed. The night was cool and calm and the waves collapsed peacefully on the shore. The rods were still standing in the sand with their lines in the water. It was said to be bad luck to take them out after sundown. “Why’s the sand white?” asked Marjorie. “I don’t know,” said Nick. “Why is anything the way it is.”
  • Issue 11, March 2018
  • Short Story
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Fake Names

Adenocarcinoma lines his lungs; not what Richard wants to hear. He plays the tape of his father on the ledge, in the air, plunging seven floors down. Richard wonders if he himself had “always been falling and only now looked down.”
  • Issue 7, November 2017
  • Short Story
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The Redness of the Setting Sun

Daniel Bartkowiak knows how to make a sentence glide and dialogue slip into your mental sphere in a most understated way: “We have to go soon.” “Better start drinking then.” And this story is not quite what it seems.
  • Issue 5, September 2017
  • Short Story
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Two Young, Too Young

  • Issue 4, August 2017
  • Short Story
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