With courage and honesty, Leilani Squire writes of a life-changing event in her stunning piece “Wonderland” – “I can’t go back to that place before I was married. That part of my life is dead and buried, and covered with too much shame and grief.” The narrative grabs you and the raw emotion and truth revealed lingers.
“I’m going to tell you a story, parts of which I’ve kept in my heart for nearly fifty years, and other parts I’ve been silent about for seventeen years, and have not written about until today, December 31, 2017.” This is the introduction to Glenn Schiffman’s piece “A Story I Know By Heart” – an odyssey of personal decisions, truth, and action that began in 1968. It is an intense and intriguing journey, for both writer and reader.
“The End of the Natural Killing” by Erez Majerantz draws the story of Yuval, a minister in the government who has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Memories of his past and yearnings in his present haunt how he manages the illness. Yuval is not the most virtuous of men, and his slow death exposes these complex layers of his humanness.
K. Alan Leitch introduces us to a modern-day Nancy Drew in his novel “Too Much Information.” Teenager Jessica awakens from a coma with a special ability – she can see in a person’s eyes the evil they have done, but not the act itself, just a word. By Chapter 3, Jessica has seen the word “murderer” in the eyes of her psychiatrist and with the help of her friend Marnie, they are on a mission to discover who, when, and why.
Mariela writes for the Stockholm Free Press, stories with click-bait headlines and gulp worthy details. But as she laments to her copy editor Torsten, she needs a change — “I need to see how the insect and lizard sees. I need to witness the little things and feel big things about little things. Right?” And as we discover in Chapter 1 of Darlow Safley’s novel “The Perfect Beauty,” she also needs to find her father.
Mirka has fallen into a coma and Przemek, her boyfriend, injects himself and the bathyscaphe he has built into her bloodstream to try and save her. “Heart Mighty Power,” a fragment of Lukasz Drobnik’s novella “Nocturine,” takes the reader on a powerful and surrealistic journey through the spaces and soul of her heart.
The setting for Vanessa Christie’s short story “Midnight Ride” is San Diego and the action centers on finding a serial killer who is targeting cyclists. But frankly, you will have to read it to find out more. Built into the intrigue and action of the story is also a slow revelation of characters. As with her novel excerpt, Strangers You Know, Christie does not disappoint.
If you want to be a writer, distinguish yourself as the last child in your first grade class to read. As a kid, you must reject every printed word that your parents dangle in front of your face and shrug your shoulders in response. Your parents will worry, and they’ll question whether your inability to read is related to your hearing loss.
The Ladies of the Hour The ladies sit in rigid chairs, hands crossed in skirt-covered laps. A silent room made loud by expectations. Miss Understanding smiles [knowingly] but never speaks. She fears the labels- foolslutbitchuselesswoman- but can’t live with the judgement. Miss Take quietly steals bagels and donuts from the untouched serving trays sitting in the back of the room. Miss Behavior watches and frowns, though secretly envious and so …
Smoked oysters, red wine, and Darla’s brown skin open to air in the middle of changing her shirt. I’m drinking whiskey, playing old songs— the one about the girl we want, the one who left. The woman outside watching the fire she built might not be as pretty, but her white dress and black hair dance in these mountains. The railroad strike is over, the harvest is coming north. All …
I.
The green chair was the width of a three-year-old
so when stretched horizontally across your legs
I was perfectly encapsulated by its soft, mushy arms and you
you put cherry blossoms in my curls
A Calling The sunrise burns us up. It’s been a long night and nothing has been refused or taken back. All of our friends are stealing night terrors from the cracks in the walls. We have kingdoms melting in our pockets. We have trails of crushed cherry blossoms threaded through each rib. We’re reading The Ethical Slut and hitting on German lawyers. In the Dutch winter the parallel scars on …
Saint Sylvia Mark him for the amniotic writ as he stands before me, pockets full of stones. My weightlessness will not prevent his sinking. The half-hearted are heavy. The one before him was full of lead, a crown of bullets worn as life preserver. Seeking Daddy’s meridian eye he fell down. Sank. The brute jelly fish. I draw them, grim-faced men, like the moon. Pitiable poets who fashion garnet daggered …
We have tattoos and an impeccable work ethic, They do not know where to put us. Our faith should be in the old system, In white male hood we trust. I drink. I curse. I go to work it doesn’t slow me down. “I’m a vegan.” I shit 4x a day. (No, not really) I see no time any day to rest or just lay. I could blame the whole …
Appeasement What you did wasn’t so bad so you told yourself as you stood in the garage, waiting for hope. Hope for appeasement by an ex-best friend but the rusting white chariot that slowed then accelerated was Tundra not Tacoma No, you’re right, it was terrible to live without love in small rooms with flawed creations, the trivial handiwork of a dream gone bad Do you know the grail is …
Transfiguration Black ground eats the light of every heavenly expression in this ungratified November night. We watch the dissipation of vapor and mist, endearing darkness further to itself, betraying the tranquility of nocturnal harvest, the lunatic scraps of this moment fighting to keep their particular bearing. In this nearness, I measure the asymmetry of your features with my own, revealed by a sudden and gradual intrusion of amber, a different …
Empty Parking Lot, 2:07 a.m. over that hill, past the mills, is the crooked house I escaped from. it wasn’t a great fall with the colors, mostly hunter green and rust with the rain. like it was too depressed to go ahead and shine like it usually does. now, it’s a sheet of white, the dying hidden. catch snowflakes on my tongue, a cold smoky taste. how winter feels on …
The milk moment, the churning need- bubble echoes empty into “them.” The words that circle, your bird’s eye view is weak and needing. Only what you catch will live another day; so it’s spoken. The words you hear are reminders, a memory stream bright and beaming. What you say to yourself, how you picture what is thought and felt; all the word storms that plague and infect your life, all …
Hidden Losses It never crossed my mind— what would happen after reaching, finally, that happiness. How it would feel giving up the open-ended beauty of indifference, my love of following the dark into the secret corners of people, cities —feelings that can only be scraped against by willing to give it all up at a moment’s notice— To be done finding love by pulling it out of the dirt by …
Manumission …from the mud, spiraling double-helix intent upon apotheosis ersatz DNA, verisimilitude of countless generations separating us from first mover/primordial ooze copies of copies effigies of weltschmerz simulacra of daedalian dreams melted by sunrays burning as we venture too close or wake, blinking at the morn. What then? Can we escape the cave, turn from shadow to illumination, or should we find contentment in mud and echoes? Cigarette Flick Speeding …
As Hilda stepped off the train, it caught her eye, gleaming like a star misplaced on land. She felt drawn to the gold pendant, as if an extrinsic force were compelling her to pick it up. It was shaped like an insect—not quite a beetle, more of a scorpion without the tail. Commuters hurried past, no one appeared to be searching for anything. The pendant seemed strange but familiar, as …
Blood was spurting all over Lenny “The Bruiser” Gigliotti’s clothes. He was not happy about the blood, but he was even less happy about Ray “Skippy” Delano having his knuckles crunched and twisted with pliers. Ray had been holding out on the boss, Vinnie, and Vinnie wasn’t happy. That was what brought about Vinnie ordering Nicky “The Claw” Ragoni to twist Ray’s knuckles with pliers in the first place. Vinnie …
It was midnight and Katju was exhausted. He owned a quaint little Italian restaurant at Ashwem beach and had spent the entire day waiting tables. Raju, his only waiter, had been dipping into the till and Katju had recently sacked him. With a glass of Pinot Noir and a grilled ham and cheese sandwich at his elbow, he opened ‘Forty Rules of Love’, a book that described the relationship between …
May, 2015 There was always a moment, right before she entered the clinic, that Hannah had an almost unbearable urge to turn and run. It was some combination of revulsion for the neediness of the women and dread of taking responsibility for their welfare that nearly propelled her in the opposite direction each day. It wasn’t rational. Hannah was relieved when she saw that all the chairs in the waiting …