Category: Prose
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My Mother’s House, Without My Mother
by Mark Brazaitis My mother is making eggs and chicken sausage in the kitchen. She died a month ago. It’s eight in the morning, and I am waking up in a second-floor bedroom of her house in Washington, D.C. Even after I remember she’s dead, I smell the eggs and sausage. I wonder if I’m…
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I Saw My Friend Last Night
by Clint Martin I saw my friend last night. And boy has it been a while. The moment I spotted my man my mind went to calculating calendars and figured we’d circled the sun almost five times since I’d last stood in the shade of my friend’s shadow. That’s just too long. Especially for a…
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From A Distance
by Marlene Olin They were stranded in space. Somehow an eight-day test run had turned into a nine-month ordeal. Butch and Suni weathered the circumstances as best they could. But sometimes events spiral. Sometimes the joystick falls out of your grasp. Home or the heavens. Did they have a choice? This year I turned seventy-two.…
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The Arrow of Time Only Points in One Direction
by Joe Woodward A mother, an elephant’s gray belly sliced pink, green sludge spilling out, grasses half-digested puddling in the midday sun. Violet shuddered remembering it from the television. The men waving their machetes over their heads. Somewhere in a jungle this was happening, or an abandoned zoo on the edge of a municipal park.…
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Our Blue World
by Morgan Rose-Marie It’s blue. This is the first thing Birdie notices. She fixates on the shade, matching it to memories like a DIY decorator comparing paint swatches. #03045e. Dark blue. 1.25% red, 1.6% green and a generous 36.9% blue. It’s a good color. But, if it weren’t for the color, Birdie might appreciate the…
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The Last Note of the Sea
by Sheema Kalbasi The girl had been watching The Little Mermaid when the first sound came. It was not thunder. It was the shriek of metal tearing through the air. The television flickered, then the electricity vanished. The room sank into silence. The cartoon ocean froze mid-motion, and Ariel’s song ended just before she reached…
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Biscuits and Gravy
by Eve Odom Gravy. Beautiful, velvet, mushroom colored gravy, made from the grease of fried pork, and if you don’t have that Crisco will work in a pinch, sprinkled with flour, salt and pepper, and browned to just the right moment. Milk is then added and cooked down to a luxurious viscosity, not too thick,…
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Abridged
by Maggie Carter A thick layer of fog clung to the surface of Crater Lake that morning. The ends of her ponytail curled as she trudged through the blue haze, kicking up sand with every step. She was only halfway to her destination, and this strange pilgrimage was made even stranger by the January cold.…