SoFloPoJo
ISSUE 24 February 2022
Editor: Francine Witte
Editor: Francine Witte
FLASH
Brett Biebel * April Bradley * Bonnie Brewer-Kraus * Myna Chang * Peter Cherches * Michael Cocchiarale * Gay Degani * Valerie Fox * Stephanie Katz * Ra'Niqua Lee * Mark Russo * Caleb James Stewart * Kirby Michael Wright
Brett Biebel Rock Island, IL
Moon Over Moorhead
Jimmy and I go to this play in Minneapolis, and there’s a nude scene, and he can’t
stop staring at the actor’s ass. There’s a birthmark on it that looks just like Texas. Like
Jesus. Like that Milwaukee Brewers logo with the baseball and the glove, and it all depends
on who you ask, and he gets real obsessed about it. Wakes up screaming. He can’t figure
out if it’s real or if it’s makeup or what kind of message it’s supposed to send, and if it’s
about character or fame or what it means to even be looking, and so he goes to see the show
seven, eight times, and this is a man with zero artistic bones in his body. Can’t sing. Can’t
dance. Thinks anybody can’t change his own oil is a “goddamn pussy,” and we were never a
good match, but he calls me one night. In winter. It’s way past dark. There’s two feet of
snow in Fargo, and he says he found the guy’s old girlfriend, the actor’s, and I can tell he’s
describing her with his hands.
“She looks like you,” he says, and they meet up near Highway 75, out by the Red
River, and he asks about it. About the guy’s ass. I guess she just looks at him. She says she
made a drawing once. Pencil and shading, and she still has it somewhere, back at her
apartment, and they go over there, and he says he’ll give her 500 for it. It’s probably
everything he has. As I’m listening, I’m thinking how it’s maybe not the worst thing he’s
ever spent money on, and there’s this pause on the other end. It’s like you can feel magnets
in the background. Garbage trucks.
“Well,” I say. “What’s the verdict?” but he just grunts, and then the line goes dead,
and it’s about two weeks later the package shows up. The corner’s ripped. I unroll it, and I
wonder if it’s an original or a copy or some sick joke on account of how I once told him he’d
probably end up divorced and happy and watching football alone in his basement, and the
picture’s all gray and smells like cigarettes, and you can’t even see anything, really. It’s light
like a paper airplane. It’s feels like a boat that’s been sent out to sea.
Brett Biebel teaches writing and literature at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. His (mostly very) short fiction has appeared in Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Masters Review, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. It's also been chosen for Best Small Fictions and as part of Wigleaf's annual Top 50 Very Short Stories. 48 Blitz, his debut story collection, is available from Split/Lip Press.
Jimmy and I go to this play in Minneapolis, and there’s a nude scene, and he can’t
stop staring at the actor’s ass. There’s a birthmark on it that looks just like Texas. Like
Jesus. Like that Milwaukee Brewers logo with the baseball and the glove, and it all depends
on who you ask, and he gets real obsessed about it. Wakes up screaming. He can’t figure
out if it’s real or if it’s makeup or what kind of message it’s supposed to send, and if it’s
about character or fame or what it means to even be looking, and so he goes to see the show
seven, eight times, and this is a man with zero artistic bones in his body. Can’t sing. Can’t
dance. Thinks anybody can’t change his own oil is a “goddamn pussy,” and we were never a
good match, but he calls me one night. In winter. It’s way past dark. There’s two feet of
snow in Fargo, and he says he found the guy’s old girlfriend, the actor’s, and I can tell he’s
describing her with his hands.
“She looks like you,” he says, and they meet up near Highway 75, out by the Red
River, and he asks about it. About the guy’s ass. I guess she just looks at him. She says she
made a drawing once. Pencil and shading, and she still has it somewhere, back at her
apartment, and they go over there, and he says he’ll give her 500 for it. It’s probably
everything he has. As I’m listening, I’m thinking how it’s maybe not the worst thing he’s
ever spent money on, and there’s this pause on the other end. It’s like you can feel magnets
in the background. Garbage trucks.
“Well,” I say. “What’s the verdict?” but he just grunts, and then the line goes dead,
and it’s about two weeks later the package shows up. The corner’s ripped. I unroll it, and I
wonder if it’s an original or a copy or some sick joke on account of how I once told him he’d
probably end up divorced and happy and watching football alone in his basement, and the
picture’s all gray and smells like cigarettes, and you can’t even see anything, really. It’s light
like a paper airplane. It’s feels like a boat that’s been sent out to sea.
Brett Biebel teaches writing and literature at Augustana College in Rock Island, IL. His (mostly very) short fiction has appeared in Hobart, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Masters Review, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. It's also been chosen for Best Small Fictions and as part of Wigleaf's annual Top 50 Very Short Stories. 48 Blitz, his debut story collection, is available from Split/Lip Press.
April Bradley Durham, NC
Sugar Spun
I watched my new husband’s cousin, one of his groomsmen, stand under the opulent skylight of
the historical train station in Nashville where we held our wedding reception. He ran his finger
along the round piece of thin cardboard that had supported my wedding cake. As he scraped off
the last bit of frosting, he looked up, smiled his Robert Redford smile and sucked it off his finger.
“Your cake,” he mouthed at me from across the grand lobby, “was so good!”
He blew me a kiss and winked.
I had not known that cakes--this was before I baked, before everyone baked, this was before
beautiful, magnificent cakes—were engineered by something so ordinary as corrugated
fiberboard, and I had never attended a wedding where people couldn’t get enough cake, loved it
so much, they vanished it.
I tasted one small piece and thought, this is sign of good fortune: our wedding, right down to the
cake, delighted everyone.
We were luscious Italian Cream cake, enhanced with lemon curd and a sweet complexity of
buttermilk, coconut, pecans, and almonds. We didn’t need to save a piece for luck (we’d dearly
need luck and it was there, bubbling along in the flowing champagne disguised as resilience and
fortitude).
Later, I’d remember how little of my wedding cake I had eaten, how flimsy a foundation
cardboard is.
April Bradley is a Durham, North Carolina-based writer. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in such places as Blink Ink, CHEAP POP, CRAFT, Heavy Feather Review, JMWW, and Narratively. She is the publisher and editor of Ruby and serves as an associate editor for fiction at Pidgeonholes and as a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly.
I watched my new husband’s cousin, one of his groomsmen, stand under the opulent skylight of
the historical train station in Nashville where we held our wedding reception. He ran his finger
along the round piece of thin cardboard that had supported my wedding cake. As he scraped off
the last bit of frosting, he looked up, smiled his Robert Redford smile and sucked it off his finger.
“Your cake,” he mouthed at me from across the grand lobby, “was so good!”
He blew me a kiss and winked.
I had not known that cakes--this was before I baked, before everyone baked, this was before
beautiful, magnificent cakes—were engineered by something so ordinary as corrugated
fiberboard, and I had never attended a wedding where people couldn’t get enough cake, loved it
so much, they vanished it.
I tasted one small piece and thought, this is sign of good fortune: our wedding, right down to the
cake, delighted everyone.
We were luscious Italian Cream cake, enhanced with lemon curd and a sweet complexity of
buttermilk, coconut, pecans, and almonds. We didn’t need to save a piece for luck (we’d dearly
need luck and it was there, bubbling along in the flowing champagne disguised as resilience and
fortitude).
Later, I’d remember how little of my wedding cake I had eaten, how flimsy a foundation
cardboard is.
April Bradley is a Durham, North Carolina-based writer. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in such places as Blink Ink, CHEAP POP, CRAFT, Heavy Feather Review, JMWW, and Narratively. She is the publisher and editor of Ruby and serves as an associate editor for fiction at Pidgeonholes and as a submissions editor at SmokeLong Quarterly.
Bonnie Brewer-Kraus Cleveland Heights, OH
Not My Fish
“When I first saw you, I didn’t think you were my child,” my father says. “I had my
doubts.” His tone is conversational, meditative, as if this is a perfectly ordinary topic between
father and daughter. We are fishing on a small lake in Southern Michigan, sitting on opposite
ends of an aluminum boat, facing away from each other. I am glad I cannot see his face.
“But by your first birthday, there was no question, you had my big nose and my big
mouth.” He sounds disappointed, as if I had gotten away with something. Nose theft?
I shiver. The air is chilly and the November sky ashy and low, draining quickly of light
and warmth and I wonder why I am here.
My line goes taut, quivering with tension, a slight undulation in the gray water.
“You’ve got one, hook her and reel her in,” my father shouts.
I let the line go slack, play it out until I feel the fish slip away.
My father turns toward me, rocking the boat. “Haven’t I taught you better than that? You
let that fish go.”
“Not my fish,” I say. “I’ll recognize her when I see her.”
“Not your fish? What are you talking about?” His face breaks into jagged creases of
puzzlement, then smooths and hardens. He makes a rude sound with the mouth we share. “Oh, I
get it, smartass.” He turns around, the line of his back a rejection. Subtlety is not always lost on
my father.
“I thought you said that fishing is about the journey, not the destination,” I say. I don’t
know why I bother, but I can’t resist needling him.
“Yeah, yeah, but it’s always better to get a damn fish.”
I don’t even pretend to fish. A formation of geese arrows across the sky and I wonder
how they coordinate so precisely in flight without speech. I think of the time remaining until I
can glance at the clock on his cabin wall and say, “I better get on the road, traffic can be murder
on Sundays going into the city.” He will pretend he wants me to stay for dinner and I will enact a
pantomime of regret, followed by relief as I hit the open highway.
I imagine catching one of those magical fish from fairy tales, the ones that grant three
wishes. Naturally, I would wish for a different father, and in keeping with the nasty irony of such
tales, I would get El Chapo or Charles Manson. No, I should be more specific, wishing for a
father who listened to me and took the time to know me. I imagine a therapist father with a pipe
and elbow patches, intoning, “Tell me more,” all the while making notes in a black Moleskine
notebook and observing me over his half-moon spectacles. No, I’d settle for a father I could
forget about entirely, as if he never existed. I see a barren lunar surface with howling winds, the
empty vacuum of space beyond and myself born out of a bulbous pod in a bizarre act of
parthenogenesis. Those wish stories never work out.
My father stands up, jerking his line and playing his reel. The flexible rod bends. They
struggle, the man in his element, the fish in hers, but it is too late, the hook has sunk. Soon she
dangles, wriggling and flailing before him, a fading shimmer along her yellow-green scales. If
she had a voice, she would be screaming.
“Smallmouth bass,” my father says. “That’s definitely MY fish. That one had my name
on it.” He chuckles, glancing sideways at me.
On the way back, he sits in the stern and I in the bow, his hand firmly on the tiller handle.
He is expansive, uncharacteristically chatty. The fish lies quietly in its tomb of ice in the cooler.
“When I die, if I ever do, I want my ashes scattered on a lake, any lake, doesn’t have to
be this one. Any lake will do. I just want to be part of all this, forever.” He waves his arm at the
shadowy woods and the dull, dead sky.
I see our reflection in the opaque surface, a man and his daughter on a small lake in
Southern Michigan on an autumn evening. Even as I watch, our image is fading in the deepening
twilight, and I wonder if there will ever be a world in which we can recognize each other.
Bonnie Brewer-Kraus is a former architect who lives near Lake Erie in Cleveland Heights, Ohio with her husband and two rescue dogs. She writes short fiction and personal essays about the heartbreaking beauty of the rust belt and the difficulties of love and connection. Her fiction has been published in The Gordon Square Review and is upcoming in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
“When I first saw you, I didn’t think you were my child,” my father says. “I had my
doubts.” His tone is conversational, meditative, as if this is a perfectly ordinary topic between
father and daughter. We are fishing on a small lake in Southern Michigan, sitting on opposite
ends of an aluminum boat, facing away from each other. I am glad I cannot see his face.
“But by your first birthday, there was no question, you had my big nose and my big
mouth.” He sounds disappointed, as if I had gotten away with something. Nose theft?
I shiver. The air is chilly and the November sky ashy and low, draining quickly of light
and warmth and I wonder why I am here.
My line goes taut, quivering with tension, a slight undulation in the gray water.
“You’ve got one, hook her and reel her in,” my father shouts.
I let the line go slack, play it out until I feel the fish slip away.
My father turns toward me, rocking the boat. “Haven’t I taught you better than that? You
let that fish go.”
“Not my fish,” I say. “I’ll recognize her when I see her.”
“Not your fish? What are you talking about?” His face breaks into jagged creases of
puzzlement, then smooths and hardens. He makes a rude sound with the mouth we share. “Oh, I
get it, smartass.” He turns around, the line of his back a rejection. Subtlety is not always lost on
my father.
“I thought you said that fishing is about the journey, not the destination,” I say. I don’t
know why I bother, but I can’t resist needling him.
“Yeah, yeah, but it’s always better to get a damn fish.”
I don’t even pretend to fish. A formation of geese arrows across the sky and I wonder
how they coordinate so precisely in flight without speech. I think of the time remaining until I
can glance at the clock on his cabin wall and say, “I better get on the road, traffic can be murder
on Sundays going into the city.” He will pretend he wants me to stay for dinner and I will enact a
pantomime of regret, followed by relief as I hit the open highway.
I imagine catching one of those magical fish from fairy tales, the ones that grant three
wishes. Naturally, I would wish for a different father, and in keeping with the nasty irony of such
tales, I would get El Chapo or Charles Manson. No, I should be more specific, wishing for a
father who listened to me and took the time to know me. I imagine a therapist father with a pipe
and elbow patches, intoning, “Tell me more,” all the while making notes in a black Moleskine
notebook and observing me over his half-moon spectacles. No, I’d settle for a father I could
forget about entirely, as if he never existed. I see a barren lunar surface with howling winds, the
empty vacuum of space beyond and myself born out of a bulbous pod in a bizarre act of
parthenogenesis. Those wish stories never work out.
My father stands up, jerking his line and playing his reel. The flexible rod bends. They
struggle, the man in his element, the fish in hers, but it is too late, the hook has sunk. Soon she
dangles, wriggling and flailing before him, a fading shimmer along her yellow-green scales. If
she had a voice, she would be screaming.
“Smallmouth bass,” my father says. “That’s definitely MY fish. That one had my name
on it.” He chuckles, glancing sideways at me.
On the way back, he sits in the stern and I in the bow, his hand firmly on the tiller handle.
He is expansive, uncharacteristically chatty. The fish lies quietly in its tomb of ice in the cooler.
“When I die, if I ever do, I want my ashes scattered on a lake, any lake, doesn’t have to
be this one. Any lake will do. I just want to be part of all this, forever.” He waves his arm at the
shadowy woods and the dull, dead sky.
I see our reflection in the opaque surface, a man and his daughter on a small lake in
Southern Michigan on an autumn evening. Even as I watch, our image is fading in the deepening
twilight, and I wonder if there will ever be a world in which we can recognize each other.
Bonnie Brewer-Kraus is a former architect who lives near Lake Erie in Cleveland Heights, Ohio with her husband and two rescue dogs. She writes short fiction and personal essays about the heartbreaking beauty of the rust belt and the difficulties of love and connection. Her fiction has been published in The Gordon Square Review and is upcoming in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.
Myna Chang Potomac, MD
Lost & Found At The Oasis Motel on State Highway 6
This time, he didn’t sneak in through the loose chain-link of the back fence, didn’t slip
quietly naked into the deep end of the pool, didn’t hum a Springsteen song to calm the adrenaline
that spiked the instant his tongue slid into Candy Lee’s tepid mouth.
***
This time, he didn’t run on fumes and coast dead into the alley behind the parking lot. He
didn’t siphon five gallons of gas from Mr. Rodriguez’s gray Pontiac Phoenix, didn’t puke Cuervo
on his crumpled college expulsion letter before passing out in the ditch under the flashing
“VA_ANCY” sign.
**
This time, he didn’t bring a plastic bag stuffed with dirty socks and his fifteen-year-old
letterman jacket, didn’t dial and redial his voicemail only to hang up on his wife’s recorded
confession, didn’t drop his gold band down the drain in the stained bathroom sink.
*
This time, he tries not to think of the endings, of all the things lost. He replaces a ruptured
compressor in the lobby ice machine, pulls a garter snake out of the swimming pool pump,
smears cheap epoxy on the countertop cracks in rooms 7 and 9. This time, he walks the
perimeter, searching for that once-upon-a-time portal, brushes his hand across the rusting sag of
chain-link, aches again with the tight-chested promise of a teenage boy raw under boundless sky.
Myna Chang's work has been selected for Best Small Fictions, Fractured Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, and The Citron Review, among others. She is the winner of the 2020 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Potomac, Maryland. Read more at MynaChang.com or @MynaChang.
quietly naked into the deep end of the pool, didn’t hum a Springsteen song to calm the adrenaline
that spiked the instant his tongue slid into Candy Lee’s tepid mouth.
***
This time, he didn’t run on fumes and coast dead into the alley behind the parking lot. He
didn’t siphon five gallons of gas from Mr. Rodriguez’s gray Pontiac Phoenix, didn’t puke Cuervo
on his crumpled college expulsion letter before passing out in the ditch under the flashing
“VA_ANCY” sign.
**
This time, he didn’t bring a plastic bag stuffed with dirty socks and his fifteen-year-old
letterman jacket, didn’t dial and redial his voicemail only to hang up on his wife’s recorded
confession, didn’t drop his gold band down the drain in the stained bathroom sink.
*
This time, he tries not to think of the endings, of all the things lost. He replaces a ruptured
compressor in the lobby ice machine, pulls a garter snake out of the swimming pool pump,
smears cheap epoxy on the countertop cracks in rooms 7 and 9. This time, he walks the
perimeter, searching for that once-upon-a-time portal, brushes his hand across the rusting sag of
chain-link, aches again with the tight-chested promise of a teenage boy raw under boundless sky.
Myna Chang's work has been selected for Best Small Fictions, Fractured Lit, X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, and The Citron Review, among others. She is the winner of the 2020 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Potomac, Maryland. Read more at MynaChang.com or @MynaChang.
Peter Cherches Brooklyn, NY
The Package
It was a Wednesday in late November. There was a package for me in the mail.
Who could it be from? I never receive packages. The only mail I receive is bills and junk
mail. It was a very small package. I wondered what was in the package. I tore the brown
craft paper with the postage and my address off. There was no return address. The small
box was gift wrapped, nondescript gift wrap. It didn’t appear to be aimed at any particular
occasion. It was the size of a box you’d find a watch in, or a bracelet. I removed the gift
wrap. The box was red, red silk on stiff board. There was no card. I opened the box.
Inside was not an item of jewelry, it was a Thanksgiving dinner. A piping hot miniature
turkey with crispy skin, roasted sweet potatoes, stuffing (we never called it dressing, that
was for salads), cranberry sauce. It smelled great. Somebody must have gone to a lot of
trouble to make such a perfect miniature Thanksgiving dinner. I figured I should try it
before it got cold. So I ate the turkey in one bite, bones and all. It was, after all,
considerably smaller than a lark. It was delicious, but hardly filling. Could this be an
advertising scheme? Would I get a call later to ask me how I liked the sample, and then
take my order for a full Thanksgiving dinner when I raved about how great the teaser
was? But no, that wasn’t it, no call ever came. So on Thanksgiving day I ate the leftover
stuffing, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce.
Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches has published three volumes of short prose fiction with Pelekinesis since 2013, most recently Whistler’s Mother’s Son. His writing has also appeared in scores of magazines, anthologies and websites, including Harper’s, Flash, Bomb, Semiotext(e), Litro, and Fiction International, as well as Billy Collins’ Poetry 180 website and anthology. He’s a native of Brooklyn, New York.
It was a Wednesday in late November. There was a package for me in the mail.
Who could it be from? I never receive packages. The only mail I receive is bills and junk
mail. It was a very small package. I wondered what was in the package. I tore the brown
craft paper with the postage and my address off. There was no return address. The small
box was gift wrapped, nondescript gift wrap. It didn’t appear to be aimed at any particular
occasion. It was the size of a box you’d find a watch in, or a bracelet. I removed the gift
wrap. The box was red, red silk on stiff board. There was no card. I opened the box.
Inside was not an item of jewelry, it was a Thanksgiving dinner. A piping hot miniature
turkey with crispy skin, roasted sweet potatoes, stuffing (we never called it dressing, that
was for salads), cranberry sauce. It smelled great. Somebody must have gone to a lot of
trouble to make such a perfect miniature Thanksgiving dinner. I figured I should try it
before it got cold. So I ate the turkey in one bite, bones and all. It was, after all,
considerably smaller than a lark. It was delicious, but hardly filling. Could this be an
advertising scheme? Would I get a call later to ask me how I liked the sample, and then
take my order for a full Thanksgiving dinner when I raved about how great the teaser
was? But no, that wasn’t it, no call ever came. So on Thanksgiving day I ate the leftover
stuffing, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce.
Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches has published three volumes of short prose fiction with Pelekinesis since 2013, most recently Whistler’s Mother’s Son. His writing has also appeared in scores of magazines, anthologies and websites, including Harper’s, Flash, Bomb, Semiotext(e), Litro, and Fiction International, as well as Billy Collins’ Poetry 180 website and anthology. He’s a native of Brooklyn, New York.
Michael Cocchiarale Chester, PA
Garbage Time
Midway through the fourth, fifty-six to zip, and yet another doomed play—this one, a
blast up the middle into an immovable mass. Whistles. Fraught disentanglements. The losing
team’s running back writhes on the turf.
Another break. Dead space on the screen. I say, “Well, they’ve covered--
“The spread,” Dad says, catching the pass I tossed.
A commercial: toothsome teens gushing about fantastic cell phone plans.
Now what? I could use the bathroom, but I’d done that during the time out a minute
before. Another bourbon? Not food—Mom and Dana are picking up pizza. There’s always
weather, unseasonable for November.
Dad says, “In the end, we lose it all.”
I hide surprise with a sigh. “Not life everlasting. Don’t you listen at church?”
“Ever do something just to please somebody?”
This, I nearly say. This hopeless attempt at bonding.
“I’m angry. Spitting nails. And when I’m dead, I’ll lose even that.”
Last week, Mom had called to say something about tests. Dad leans toward me now.
“Meta, metas,” he whispers. “Anyway, it’s game over.”
On TV, a woman sniffs a room that could use a wipe and spray.
“Your mother doesn’t…”
I just can’t. I stand, shake my head, end around the end table to the kitchen, where a
white bag ghosts the left-open can. Grounds like topsoil, eggshells from the morning. I tie and
run the trash into the early evening emptiness. The maple’s weeping leaves. A red ball gags the
foul mouth of the sewer.
Back inside, Dad’s eyes are sealed. On the screen, a third-string wideout soars across the
end zone until his shoulders drop as if shot. The camera pans to a yellow flag and arms over a
striped shirt’s head. The play is coming back. It never really happened is what those whistles
meant.
Michael Cocchiarale is the author of the novel None of the Above (Unsolicited, 2019) and two short story collections--Here Is Ware (Fomite, 2018) and Still Time (Fomite, 2012). His creative work appears online as well, in journals such as Fictive Dream, Pithead Chapel, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, Cabinet of Heed, and The Disappointed Housewife. He lives and writes in Chester, PA.
Midway through the fourth, fifty-six to zip, and yet another doomed play—this one, a
blast up the middle into an immovable mass. Whistles. Fraught disentanglements. The losing
team’s running back writhes on the turf.
Another break. Dead space on the screen. I say, “Well, they’ve covered--
“The spread,” Dad says, catching the pass I tossed.
A commercial: toothsome teens gushing about fantastic cell phone plans.
Now what? I could use the bathroom, but I’d done that during the time out a minute
before. Another bourbon? Not food—Mom and Dana are picking up pizza. There’s always
weather, unseasonable for November.
Dad says, “In the end, we lose it all.”
I hide surprise with a sigh. “Not life everlasting. Don’t you listen at church?”
“Ever do something just to please somebody?”
This, I nearly say. This hopeless attempt at bonding.
“I’m angry. Spitting nails. And when I’m dead, I’ll lose even that.”
Last week, Mom had called to say something about tests. Dad leans toward me now.
“Meta, metas,” he whispers. “Anyway, it’s game over.”
On TV, a woman sniffs a room that could use a wipe and spray.
“Your mother doesn’t…”
I just can’t. I stand, shake my head, end around the end table to the kitchen, where a
white bag ghosts the left-open can. Grounds like topsoil, eggshells from the morning. I tie and
run the trash into the early evening emptiness. The maple’s weeping leaves. A red ball gags the
foul mouth of the sewer.
Back inside, Dad’s eyes are sealed. On the screen, a third-string wideout soars across the
end zone until his shoulders drop as if shot. The camera pans to a yellow flag and arms over a
striped shirt’s head. The play is coming back. It never really happened is what those whistles
meant.
Michael Cocchiarale is the author of the novel None of the Above (Unsolicited, 2019) and two short story collections--Here Is Ware (Fomite, 2018) and Still Time (Fomite, 2012). His creative work appears online as well, in journals such as Fictive Dream, Pithead Chapel, Fiction Kitchen Berlin, Cabinet of Heed, and The Disappointed Housewife. He lives and writes in Chester, PA.
Gay Degani
Threadbare
This small thing draws my attention. A needle? At least, I think it’s a needle. It’s poking into an
apple that isn’t an apple, only faded red cotton wrapped around a ball of stuffing, a plastic stem,
a green felt leaf. An apple of sorts or maybe a tomato.
This small thing that must be a needle because it has an eye or what they call an “an eye” even
though what it really is, is a hole, and not a round one either. An elapse, I think. No, an ellipse. I
pluck it from the fake apple. Roll it between my pointy finger and thumb. I admire its
smoothness and holding it to the window’s thin light, I can also enjoy its bright silver shaft. A
needle then.
My mother used to sew for money, that much I remember, because the sewing machine replaced
the television set once my father left. She took out an ad in the Gazette. Called herself an expert
seamstress. Which she was, must’ve been. It wasn’t long before women brought her photographs
of store windows and pointed to a mannequin or two.
They’d ask, “Can you copy this?” “Can you add longer sleeves?” “Can you do it by Saturday?”
My mother always smiled as she reached for the fabric these women purchased at modest
venues, learning quickly that her needle made rayon look like silk.
I have never sewn. My mother always made my dresses, my shirts, my skirts, my pajamas, too,
from whatever was left over. She had a knack for combining plaids and florals with whatever
solids she’d collected. She was good enough that the girls at school didn’t poke fun, but I suspect
their mamas would have been annoyed to see their fabrics on someone like me.
I look down at my left hand and see red against the white. Like the polka dots in that favorite
dress when I was—how old? Nine? Ten? It must be blood. At least I think it is.
I study my palm. The tiny red dots, so many of them now, quivering there. That’s a needle, isn’t it?
At least, I think it’s a needle. Where did that come from?
Gay Degani has received nominations and honors for her work including Pushcart consideration, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions. Her flash and short-story work has appeared online, in print journals and in anthologies. She has a collection of eight stories about mothers, Pomegranate, a full-length collection, Rattle of Want, (Pure Slush Press, 2015) and a suspense novel, What Came Before (Truth Serum Press, 2016). She occasionally blogs at Words in Place.
This small thing draws my attention. A needle? At least, I think it’s a needle. It’s poking into an
apple that isn’t an apple, only faded red cotton wrapped around a ball of stuffing, a plastic stem,
a green felt leaf. An apple of sorts or maybe a tomato.
This small thing that must be a needle because it has an eye or what they call an “an eye” even
though what it really is, is a hole, and not a round one either. An elapse, I think. No, an ellipse. I
pluck it from the fake apple. Roll it between my pointy finger and thumb. I admire its
smoothness and holding it to the window’s thin light, I can also enjoy its bright silver shaft. A
needle then.
My mother used to sew for money, that much I remember, because the sewing machine replaced
the television set once my father left. She took out an ad in the Gazette. Called herself an expert
seamstress. Which she was, must’ve been. It wasn’t long before women brought her photographs
of store windows and pointed to a mannequin or two.
They’d ask, “Can you copy this?” “Can you add longer sleeves?” “Can you do it by Saturday?”
My mother always smiled as she reached for the fabric these women purchased at modest
venues, learning quickly that her needle made rayon look like silk.
I have never sewn. My mother always made my dresses, my shirts, my skirts, my pajamas, too,
from whatever was left over. She had a knack for combining plaids and florals with whatever
solids she’d collected. She was good enough that the girls at school didn’t poke fun, but I suspect
their mamas would have been annoyed to see their fabrics on someone like me.
I look down at my left hand and see red against the white. Like the polka dots in that favorite
dress when I was—how old? Nine? Ten? It must be blood. At least I think it is.
I study my palm. The tiny red dots, so many of them now, quivering there. That’s a needle, isn’t it?
At least, I think it’s a needle. Where did that come from?
Gay Degani has received nominations and honors for her work including Pushcart consideration, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions. Her flash and short-story work has appeared online, in print journals and in anthologies. She has a collection of eight stories about mothers, Pomegranate, a full-length collection, Rattle of Want, (Pure Slush Press, 2015) and a suspense novel, What Came Before (Truth Serum Press, 2016). She occasionally blogs at Words in Place.
Valerie Fox (Private)
I Hear a Train
I hear a train whistle and then I’m fully on board. Then I’m in Canada. Everything is
proportional, in a monumental kind of way. The landscape has papery, neutral colors. My mother
is nowhere to be found. Nor my brother. They were supposed to be here. I hold a cloth, clean
napkin. I notice some coyotes howling that remind me of back home. I’m reading the New York
Times and sipping my gimlet. A swanky rider takes a nearby seat, seething and boiling, exuding
fear. I am not late. I am fully clothed. There are no elevators, which strikes me as odd, since
usually there are.
From your Dream Dictionary --
Train Whistle
This sound predicts a journey. Consider travel insurance. To dream of visiting Canada or any
new-to-you country means that you have been enchanted, perhaps literally, by someone with the
memory of a mule. Next time someone invites you on a long-distance trip, say yes. Your money
should arrive and be proportional, natural-colored, and spendable.
Neutrals
Expect trouble on your island and at work, own it. Relating to cloth napkins, go in fear of poor
manners and abstractions because you never know when your family or spies will turn up.
Gin Drinks
Try to be punctual.
No Elevators
It just means there is no such thing as God, which you have known since kindergarten, if not
before. You should stop feeling guilty about telling Eliana (in kindergarten) that there is no God.
Coyotes
These animals could be telling you something you already knew (from the radio). They keep to
the side-skirts of the road and they trot. Not a surprise that your dream coyotes have figured out
how to buy train tickets and reach their destinations fast, just like you.
State of Undress
Are you okay?
Valerie Fox's work has appeared in Reflex, Ellipsis Zine, The Cafe Irreal, the A3 Review, Across the Margin, MacQueen's Quinterly, Juked, Cleaver, New Flash Fiction Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. A story she wrote is included in The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories on Historic Canadian Paintings. Her poetry books include The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books) and Insomniatic (PS Books). She lives in Lawrence, New Jersey.
I hear a train whistle and then I’m fully on board. Then I’m in Canada. Everything is
proportional, in a monumental kind of way. The landscape has papery, neutral colors. My mother
is nowhere to be found. Nor my brother. They were supposed to be here. I hold a cloth, clean
napkin. I notice some coyotes howling that remind me of back home. I’m reading the New York
Times and sipping my gimlet. A swanky rider takes a nearby seat, seething and boiling, exuding
fear. I am not late. I am fully clothed. There are no elevators, which strikes me as odd, since
usually there are.
From your Dream Dictionary --
Train Whistle
This sound predicts a journey. Consider travel insurance. To dream of visiting Canada or any
new-to-you country means that you have been enchanted, perhaps literally, by someone with the
memory of a mule. Next time someone invites you on a long-distance trip, say yes. Your money
should arrive and be proportional, natural-colored, and spendable.
Neutrals
Expect trouble on your island and at work, own it. Relating to cloth napkins, go in fear of poor
manners and abstractions because you never know when your family or spies will turn up.
Gin Drinks
Try to be punctual.
No Elevators
It just means there is no such thing as God, which you have known since kindergarten, if not
before. You should stop feeling guilty about telling Eliana (in kindergarten) that there is no God.
Coyotes
These animals could be telling you something you already knew (from the radio). They keep to
the side-skirts of the road and they trot. Not a surprise that your dream coyotes have figured out
how to buy train tickets and reach their destinations fast, just like you.
State of Undress
Are you okay?
Valerie Fox's work has appeared in Reflex, Ellipsis Zine, The Cafe Irreal, the A3 Review, Across the Margin, MacQueen's Quinterly, Juked, Cleaver, New Flash Fiction Review, Hanging Loose, and other journals. A story she wrote is included in The Group of Seven Reimagined: Contemporary Stories on Historic Canadian Paintings. Her poetry books include The Rorschach Factory (Straw Gate Books) and Insomniatic (PS Books). She lives in Lawrence, New Jersey.
Stephanie Katz Anna Maria Island, FL
Strange and Unusual
You look like Lydia Deets you said in the middle of our first date. My skin is pale, and my hair is
dark. Is that a compliment? I asked, and you laughed. You started to like me then, I think, but I
liked you from the start. You looked nothing like Lydia's tormentor, but your feelings for me
vacillated like the stripes on his suit. White hot, then black nothing, back and forth over the dates
the months the year mark the moving in together the dog the growing apart the this isn’t working
for me anymore the broken lease.
You never said the L word to me, but if I cried hard enough you would laugh and sit down next
to me and pretend to say it, like how you would mouth watermelon at concerts when you didn’t
know the words to the song everyone else was so excited to scream out.
Sometimes when I’m alone in my new apartment, I pretend I’m Lydia in the attic. I look down at
the tiny town that was our life together and say the incantation to make you appear in my arms.
olive juice
olive juice
olive juice
Stephanie Katz is a librarian, writer, and editor. She runs the award-winning literary journal 805 Lit + Art and is the author of Libraries Publish: How to Start a Magazine, Small Press, Blog, and More (Libraries Unlimited, ABC-CLIO, 2021). She lives on Anna Maria Island in Florida.
You look like Lydia Deets you said in the middle of our first date. My skin is pale, and my hair is
dark. Is that a compliment? I asked, and you laughed. You started to like me then, I think, but I
liked you from the start. You looked nothing like Lydia's tormentor, but your feelings for me
vacillated like the stripes on his suit. White hot, then black nothing, back and forth over the dates
the months the year mark the moving in together the dog the growing apart the this isn’t working
for me anymore the broken lease.
You never said the L word to me, but if I cried hard enough you would laugh and sit down next
to me and pretend to say it, like how you would mouth watermelon at concerts when you didn’t
know the words to the song everyone else was so excited to scream out.
Sometimes when I’m alone in my new apartment, I pretend I’m Lydia in the attic. I look down at
the tiny town that was our life together and say the incantation to make you appear in my arms.
olive juice
olive juice
olive juice
Stephanie Katz is a librarian, writer, and editor. She runs the award-winning literary journal 805 Lit + Art and is the author of Libraries Publish: How to Start a Magazine, Small Press, Blog, and More (Libraries Unlimited, ABC-CLIO, 2021). She lives on Anna Maria Island in Florida.
Ra'Niqua Lee Jonesboro, GA
Cherry Pit Dreams
When her grandmother died, Pearl swooned in exactly that way, the pretty languishing of
a plump red goodbye. Her grandmother’s neck had cradled her feverish head; her breasts had
sopped tears and hushed cries that were childlike and indecipherable or adultlike and oftentimes
still hard to understand. All now gone in one fleshy snap, a stopped heart, and a single cry for
help that outlasted her grandmother who cried it. The doctors said she was dead before she hit
the floor.
At the last checkups, Pearl kept beside the door as the doctor questioned her
grandmother’s psychological state. Threw the word “deteriorate” around as if her grandmother
wasn’t right there, the bright bulk of her on the examination table, her smile almost enough to
make the room feel like home. She did not stop smiling, even as the doctor warned that she
would continue to forget the day of the week and her own granddaughter’s name. It had made
painful sense to Pearl. The wood siding of a house deteriorated. People decomposed. Memory
slipped away. Reason dropped like rocks.
A limp musk now swamped the big bedroom, unoccupied. Pearl yanked the duvet with
two hands and cringed away from the unexpected spray of old cherry pits. The flat sheet revealed
even more that fell to Pearl’s bare feet.
“What in God’s blue heaven?” Her grandmother had loved fruit and color. She always
spoke of heaven as black heaven, blue heaven, green heaven, yellow, orange, and red heaven, no
seeming logic to it, except maybe that God’s heaven had to be as pigmented as planet earth, as
vibrant as the dyes in the good rug, now rolled against the far wall.
As if she were hiding evidence, Pearl gathered the seeds fast, squeezing as many as she
could in her fists before dropping them in the trash. She did not cry. She had gotten most of them
cleaned up when she found jars containing more seeds, lined up under the bed, not hidden,
waiting. She moved them to the dining room table, planning to throw them out, but never did. An
altar of sorts that mutated as it multiplied.
After the death, Pearl began pouring drinks part time to pay down her debts. She told
anyone who lingered too long at the bar that she was going to buy a farm. The kind of farm that
people conjured when telling kids that their pets didn’t die but went away. A postcard of a farm
that might not ever come true, bright, brilliant, and colorful. Then, when no one was looking, she
swiped the pit of a maraschino cherry left on a stranger’s napkin square and tucked it into her
pocket. This was how she liked to flirt with the people in band t-shirts who nodded their heads
too hard to guitar solos or shook their shoulders to the sound of oldies. Bent forward, one elbow
on the bar top, and her pockets full of the little dreams that must have kept her grandmother awake.
Ra'Niqua Lee writes to share her particular visions of love and the South. Every word is in honor of her little sister, Nesha, who battled schizoaffective disorder until the very end. For her always. Also, I’m a fan of the Letters Festival. I attended in 2015 and got to see Dr. Khadija Queen and Marcella Fuentes read.
When her grandmother died, Pearl swooned in exactly that way, the pretty languishing of
a plump red goodbye. Her grandmother’s neck had cradled her feverish head; her breasts had
sopped tears and hushed cries that were childlike and indecipherable or adultlike and oftentimes
still hard to understand. All now gone in one fleshy snap, a stopped heart, and a single cry for
help that outlasted her grandmother who cried it. The doctors said she was dead before she hit
the floor.
At the last checkups, Pearl kept beside the door as the doctor questioned her
grandmother’s psychological state. Threw the word “deteriorate” around as if her grandmother
wasn’t right there, the bright bulk of her on the examination table, her smile almost enough to
make the room feel like home. She did not stop smiling, even as the doctor warned that she
would continue to forget the day of the week and her own granddaughter’s name. It had made
painful sense to Pearl. The wood siding of a house deteriorated. People decomposed. Memory
slipped away. Reason dropped like rocks.
A limp musk now swamped the big bedroom, unoccupied. Pearl yanked the duvet with
two hands and cringed away from the unexpected spray of old cherry pits. The flat sheet revealed
even more that fell to Pearl’s bare feet.
“What in God’s blue heaven?” Her grandmother had loved fruit and color. She always
spoke of heaven as black heaven, blue heaven, green heaven, yellow, orange, and red heaven, no
seeming logic to it, except maybe that God’s heaven had to be as pigmented as planet earth, as
vibrant as the dyes in the good rug, now rolled against the far wall.
As if she were hiding evidence, Pearl gathered the seeds fast, squeezing as many as she
could in her fists before dropping them in the trash. She did not cry. She had gotten most of them
cleaned up when she found jars containing more seeds, lined up under the bed, not hidden,
waiting. She moved them to the dining room table, planning to throw them out, but never did. An
altar of sorts that mutated as it multiplied.
After the death, Pearl began pouring drinks part time to pay down her debts. She told
anyone who lingered too long at the bar that she was going to buy a farm. The kind of farm that
people conjured when telling kids that their pets didn’t die but went away. A postcard of a farm
that might not ever come true, bright, brilliant, and colorful. Then, when no one was looking, she
swiped the pit of a maraschino cherry left on a stranger’s napkin square and tucked it into her
pocket. This was how she liked to flirt with the people in band t-shirts who nodded their heads
too hard to guitar solos or shook their shoulders to the sound of oldies. Bent forward, one elbow
on the bar top, and her pockets full of the little dreams that must have kept her grandmother awake.
Ra'Niqua Lee writes to share her particular visions of love and the South. Every word is in honor of her little sister, Nesha, who battled schizoaffective disorder until the very end. For her always. Also, I’m a fan of the Letters Festival. I attended in 2015 and got to see Dr. Khadija Queen and Marcella Fuentes read.
Mark Russo Kennebunkport, Maine
His Dream
The son enters the room, claps, laughs and, like a jolly bear, bounds to the spot where his father
stands, wraps his arms around him deflating his lungs and plasters a kiss against the father's
cheeks so deep that the bristles of his unshaven face scrape the skin of a father who, when his
son was still a child, read Greek mythology to him out loud before he went to bed, bought him a
violin and drove him to practice every Saturday morning and, whenever he could, to a
symphony; once to hear Itzhak Perlman perform, a father who insisted, against the son's strong
opposition, that he play Londonderry Air at his final high school performance, a father who
didn't care that his son, who would rather have been the quarterback at the school's football game
and passed for the winning touchdown, thought it cruel, a father who felt pride when the
audience applauded as if to affirm his conviction that his son, now a middle aged athletics coach,
would play in a symphony orchestra someday.
Mark Russo, born January 1, 1950 in Queens, New York. A student of the University of Cincinnati he focused on the Greek, Latin, German, and French languages. After running the family business for 20 years, he graduated from the University of Maine School of Law and was accepted to the Bar in 2002. He practiced Immigration Law in the State of Maine for over 18 years. He has published stories with Flash Fiction Magazine, New Reader Magazine, 34th Parallel Magazine, Literally Stories and Potato Soup Journal.
stands, wraps his arms around him deflating his lungs and plasters a kiss against the father's
cheeks so deep that the bristles of his unshaven face scrape the skin of a father who, when his
son was still a child, read Greek mythology to him out loud before he went to bed, bought him a
violin and drove him to practice every Saturday morning and, whenever he could, to a
symphony; once to hear Itzhak Perlman perform, a father who insisted, against the son's strong
opposition, that he play Londonderry Air at his final high school performance, a father who
didn't care that his son, who would rather have been the quarterback at the school's football game
and passed for the winning touchdown, thought it cruel, a father who felt pride when the
audience applauded as if to affirm his conviction that his son, now a middle aged athletics coach,
would play in a symphony orchestra someday.
Mark Russo, born January 1, 1950 in Queens, New York. A student of the University of Cincinnati he focused on the Greek, Latin, German, and French languages. After running the family business for 20 years, he graduated from the University of Maine School of Law and was accepted to the Bar in 2002. He practiced Immigration Law in the State of Maine for over 18 years. He has published stories with Flash Fiction Magazine, New Reader Magazine, 34th Parallel Magazine, Literally Stories and Potato Soup Journal.
Caleb James Stewart
Talking Your Ear Off
You lose your ear on the beach. You had gone swimming in the ocean, the waves crashing
up upon you, when suddenly you reach up and your ear is missing from its usual spot.
Understandably, you’re a bit upset, losing a body part is always hard, but you pack up your stuff
and leave, leaving a part of yourself in the process.
When you get home you hear a voice in your ear, “Hello? Does this belong to someone?”
It is a strange feeling, but you realize this person, whoever she is, has found your ear on
the beach. She decides to take it home, and on the way, she talks to your ear. You sit there
listening to her talk. She is alone, like you. She enjoys talking, unlike you. You hear her walk
into a lonely house and place you on the counter before leaving you in silence for a few hours.
Over the next days, weeks, months, she talks to you when she’s alone. She likes to share
her secrets with you. You begin to fall in love with her, and you desire to meet her. There is no
way to communicate with her, so you are left heartbroken, but she continues to talk to you.
Eventually, she stops talking to you for a while, and you become sad. It’s a week before
you hear her voice again, talking about a boy she had met. You become insanely jealous. You
know you have no right too, but jealousy is not easily controlled. She talks to you about the ups
and downs of her relationship, until its sad end six months later.
She cries and cries to you, talking about how she has no one, no one at all. You want to
tell her she does, tell her she has you, but you can’t. All you can do is listen. Listen as she cries,
as she screams, as the gunshot fires.
And for the first time since the beach, you hear nothing. Nothing at all. You reach up and
feel as the spot where your ear was starts to bleed, as you truly feel as if a part of you is missing.
Caleb James Stewart is an alumni of the Creative Writing program at Stephen F. Austin State University from Nacogdoches, TX. He has been featured in the literary journal HUMID, and recently won the Piney Dark horror story contest.
You lose your ear on the beach. You had gone swimming in the ocean, the waves crashing
up upon you, when suddenly you reach up and your ear is missing from its usual spot.
Understandably, you’re a bit upset, losing a body part is always hard, but you pack up your stuff
and leave, leaving a part of yourself in the process.
When you get home you hear a voice in your ear, “Hello? Does this belong to someone?”
It is a strange feeling, but you realize this person, whoever she is, has found your ear on
the beach. She decides to take it home, and on the way, she talks to your ear. You sit there
listening to her talk. She is alone, like you. She enjoys talking, unlike you. You hear her walk
into a lonely house and place you on the counter before leaving you in silence for a few hours.
Over the next days, weeks, months, she talks to you when she’s alone. She likes to share
her secrets with you. You begin to fall in love with her, and you desire to meet her. There is no
way to communicate with her, so you are left heartbroken, but she continues to talk to you.
Eventually, she stops talking to you for a while, and you become sad. It’s a week before
you hear her voice again, talking about a boy she had met. You become insanely jealous. You
know you have no right too, but jealousy is not easily controlled. She talks to you about the ups
and downs of her relationship, until its sad end six months later.
She cries and cries to you, talking about how she has no one, no one at all. You want to
tell her she does, tell her she has you, but you can’t. All you can do is listen. Listen as she cries,
as she screams, as the gunshot fires.
And for the first time since the beach, you hear nothing. Nothing at all. You reach up and
feel as the spot where your ear was starts to bleed, as you truly feel as if a part of you is missing.
Caleb James Stewart is an alumni of the Creative Writing program at Stephen F. Austin State University from Nacogdoches, TX. He has been featured in the literary journal HUMID, and recently won the Piney Dark horror story contest.
Kirby Michael Wright
|
The Angel of Suburbia
A man flops on a park bench. He reflects on losses and near misses, disappointments stored like copper coins in a mayo jar. His pennies wait years to get cashed. He peels off a patch of forearm skin murdered by the Indian summer. A school bell sounds—girls in skirts arrive. The Helens of Troy tease with bouncy strides, legs flexing freckles and beauty marks. The man stares before lowering his eyes. He retreats to his Tesla. The Tesla eases into a cluttered garage. There’s everything from half-empty oil containers to seasonal decorations to surplus toilet paper. The snoop five doors south casts an inquisitive eye while squirting his ragged lawn. The man powers down the garage door and enters his castle. “We want pizza for dinner!” his son and daughter chorus. Wife watches flatscreen Netflix sipping a blue energy drink laced with vodka. The man feels the final curtain. He recalls the blonde teen next door that peeked at him through a hole in their fence. “Might sound crazy,” he muttered beside his droopy tree fern, “but can this angel be my second chance after college?” He often heard parents yelling and cussing. He felt bad for the girl. His boy sometimes played volleyball with her on the asphalt in a brotherly way. Still, he was jealous. Then a For Sale sign sprouted the Friday after Thanksgiving. Buyers swarmed like hornets. The sign was uprooted a week before Christmas—the angel of suburbia wedged a pink suitcase in the cargo area of her mother’s SUV, climbed in, and rode shotgun down the hill. The man hustled to the curb. “Shoulda said bye-bye,” he scolded himself. He watched until the SUV hung a left at the stop sign and vanished behind an ash tree. Kirby Michael Wright's new book is SORROW TOWN: Selected Stories. This collection includes slipstream, creative nonfiction, gonzo journalism, fiction, horror, and erotica. |
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