The old woman’s stark nakedness shone brightly, and juxtaposed against the tarmac. She looked just like the moon in the night sky. But just as she was a reflection of all that was above, she was also a reflection of all that was below, all that came before and all that would come after. She was the sky and the ground, the heavens and the underworld. She was everything. She was the first person I had seen in weeks.
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Great American Pastime by Dan Pinkerton
Though Mercer had good speed at the leadoff spot, he struck out often and was a liability in the field, so it shocked no one when Coach Burgus benched him. Well, almost no one. His father leapt from his chair. He was one of those middle-aged hipsters with the soul patch and visor and frosted tips. His wraparound shades, synthetic tan, and artsy tattoos had all been ordered from some catalog of cool. That’s what we figured, anyway, those of us without access to any such catalog.
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there are 156 women in the courtroom and at least a 100 more outside and we will make space for them all, yes, we will by Aliceanna Stopher
At the end of the path are the woods, which, of course, are necessary. The dirt path smells of cedar, pencil shavings, tired beginnings. When the red-hooded girl-child begins her journey she walks in halting steps, fearful of scuffing her church shoes. Mama said be careful, mama said keep tidy. One step, pause, bend at waist, swat at patent leather, unbend, step again.
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Nina by Hannah Pass
Eva and I puncture six holes in the lid. We give her a napkin for bedding and a torn page of a book. Reading material. Then, crumbles of the peanut butter protein bar she’d eat before long morning runs. We bring her along on our dinner date, lady’s night, so she won’t feel left out. Eva figures: we can fulfill Nina’s basic needs and still keep our distance. It’ll be easy!
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Know My Name by Caralyn Davis
As a boy, my father raised rabbits. “Raised” is a euphemism. The rabbits were meat. When customers wanted stew or fricassee, he slaughtered the rabbits with a hammer to the back of the head so they wouldn’t get scared and taint the succulent flesh with their screams. He did this after months of giving them food, water, a place to sleep, and the occasional pet when his fingers yearned for softness in his life—but no name, never a name. “Livestock aren’t meant to be friends,” he told me. “They exist to be used.”
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The Man and the Moon by Samantha Edmonds
He knew I’d be too large to pull down all at once, so he decided to take me in pieces. He arrived at the top of the mountain with rope and blade, bags and buckets. This close to me, he realized I was not as expected. I was more. He might need bigger buckets, better bags than the 99-cent Kroger reusables. He was surprised to feel my brightness radiated cold, not hot like light traditionally was, but he found he liked it better. I supposed it soothed the burning in his chest.
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How to Become the “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” by Mandy Shunnarah
He can’t hear her over the music, so he steps closer, closer, closer, and she steps back, back, back. The frat house rattles and thumps, shaking to the bass. The wall appears behind her and she has nowhere to go. His body looms over her like tunnel arches when he asks what her major is and if she has a boyfriend.
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Archangel by Theo Greenblatt
I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep from sneezing as the priest moved past me, swinging his shiny little incense bucket, smoke poofing out on all sides. “They suck up all the oxygen in the place,” my father used to say about priests. But now he was up there in a coffin on wheels at the altar and had no further use for oxygen himself.
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My Strangest Breakup by Vera Claeys
Vera Claeys is an interdisciplinary creative based in Davis, CA by way of Austin, TX. She has been published in Nasty Magazine, curated a photo exhibit entitled, Golden Doubts, and collaborated on an art installation for Hive Arts Collective in Austin, Texas.
She currently works for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as an event manager. Her zine entitled "Cool, Calm, and Rejected," will be published later this year.
veraclaeys.com
Photo on Foter.com
Safety Dance by Kim Kankiewicz
Cass’s Zapp Attack™ is emblazoned with an orange and red flame design. Carrying it makes her feel like one of Charlie’s Angels. She wishes she’d owned it when the sweaty guy outside the Joslyn Museum groped himself as she walked past. Cass blushed when she described that incident to the women in her Bible study a few days later, ashamed of her helplessness and of the titillation she’d felt alongside her revulsion.
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Don’t Talk to Strangers by Bonnie E. Carlson
If someone had asked Jake O’Malley if he was lonely, he’d probably have said no, loneliness being such an unmanly emotion. He just had a lot of time on his hands. After all, he had his dog, Milo, a little gray mutt with curly, wiry hair, his constant companion. No, he never thought he was lonely until he met Zoe in the park.
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Beemoor Romance by John Hearn
The first thing she told me was that she works at Victoria Secret, which I took as a way of saying she’s very sexual, very accepting of all kinds of shenanigans. And that she’s good at sex. That’s how I took it. But at that time she was already pushing seventy or so and I found it hard to picture her liver-spotted hands and bony fingers holding up a black and pink corset, bringing it up to her slightly hunched frame to give a customer a sense of how it would hang, how it would look to the guy she was planning to have sex with next.
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By Any Other Name by Carissa Halston
When you were a teenager, you volunteered for an organization in the town where you grew up, a town so small most people called it by the name of the city beside it. The organization raised money for people living with HIV and AIDS. You’ve forgotten the name of the organization, but not the names of the people you met there. Michael. Terry. Anthony. Angel. Always men, even when their names were fluid.
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Clementine, My Darling (an almost-memoir) by Joanna Brichetto
It was the clementine that killed me. I peeled it for your lunchbox because you need Fruit to complement the Protein and the Crunchy, and because school lunch is so short and you get busy chatting and if I don't peel it for you and break it into segments, the whole thing comes back home in its BPA-free, nesting container (labeled with your name in silver Sharpie).
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What'll I Do by M. A. Vizsolyi
She thought she heard someone say her name—not loudly, but not loud enough that she could make out the melody of vowel sounds that comprised her name—Laura, it said—in a way that asked her to look quickly, as if there were something to see suddenly alighting just behind her on the shelf of the bookcase—but she didn’t see anything—and things like this happened to her once and a while, but not so much that she thought it odd.
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Screen Time by Mina Manchester
Light crept in through the space between the black out curtains hanging over the bedroom window. Ron, her husband, shifted in his sleep. His shoulder twitched slightly as if reacting to a breeze. Soon the alarm would go off and he would stretch and get out of bed, not bounding exactly, but with enough gusto that Leigh would feel guilty. She was always tired. So, so tired, ever since their son was born.
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Oracle by Dustin Heron
Now Zeke looks at his grandfather. A thin old man always stooped over, the ridges of his spine bulging against his flannel, baggy corduroys hanging from his bony hips. He’s standing in the shadows of the porch, dusty shadows crammed with old wooden chairs split at the seat and mildewed couches sagging under milk crates stuffed with odds and ends. All this leading into a narrow house just as dark and just as choked with dust, the whole house tottering into its last stage of disrepair. Zeke wants to scream at everything and he wants to smash it all.
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Punch Line By Jason Manganaro
One Wednesday, a man sat on a bench under a bus shelter, sipping a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. The coffee was too hot, making each sip unbearable, but he kept at it. Car after car whizzed past, upsetting the brisk morning air with a sharp swoosh that the man found oddly soothing. Like waves from a derelict sea, chopping at the shore.
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Northern Straits by Anne Trooper
The carpenters and fishermen come into Ralph’s for breakfast. They used to eye me up and down, but with a baby growing in my belly, I guess I’m not good for that anymore. I have on the brown, canvas, second-hand coat I found at the Trading Post. A man’s coat, but it fits pretty well, and I can’t see me in cute dresses with bows on the front, or tops that say baby on board.
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The Bubble Wrapped Heart By Geoffrey Line
When Petra was little her papa hurt her, and so she put her heart in bubble wrap. Layer upon layer upon layer of unspooled, suffocating plastic that padded her vital organ in an impenetrable fortress that could go anywhere, endure anything, no matter the fragility of its contents. Pigtails, lollypops, and monkey bar skills, that was her, but she performed her brutal surgery all the same.
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