“When grandmother passed away, father grew reticent. And I was okay with it, since he abandoned his routine of scolding me for lacking masculinity. Since he didn’t condemn every tear that fell from my face, spewing the same toxic rhetoric of how I needed to emotionally withdraw and appear similar to a parapet wrapped in black derma, to protect everyone around me, just like him. When I thought I would cry most, I felt nothing.”… more
Category Archives: Fiction
Tricks
Fiction by Adam Prince“And that was nice. Really nice. Just the two of us out there walking along the street, and if you ignored the duck that was probably dead, then we could have been some real couple who owned a dog together.”… more
Toy Cars
Fiction by Jason Hardung“While the world keeps building up around him he is stuck down there, stunted by childish habits and thought, the emotional, and spiritual level of an eight or nine-year-old child.”… more
In Sickness
Fiction by Clare Diston“He hadn’t told anyone, the first time. It had seemed like a marvelous secret, the kind you didn’t tell adults for fear of ruining the magic, and even though he was getting too old for fantasies like that now, he decided again to keep it to himself. Instead he tested his new-found strength.”… more
Sparrows
Fiction by Zsombor Aurél Biró (translated by Timea Balogh)“Meanwhile I’m thinking about how this is what a rehabilitated heroin addict should look like. Not like me, or the others. Imi has a job, money, a fiancé. In short, a life. It’s all worked out for him. Of course, it all depends on your perspective. I’m alive, so if we look at it that way, it worked out for me too.”… more
Pallbearers
Fiction by Tim Buchanan“By saying yes in spite of the dangers, I felt I made myself vital and trusted. And was this not what a good American was supposed to do when making friends abroad? To open themselves up to new experiences, to say yes as much as possible, even when the proposition was frightening?”… more
Surfaces
Fiction by Kim Magowan“My ex-girlfriend Amy-Rose said to me once, ‘You only like me because I’m pretty.’ She wasn’t wrong, though I could’ve retorted, ‘You only like me because I play guitar and have a car.’ A shitty car, but still. Instead I said, ‘Man, you have such a huge ego.'”… more
LOVE IN THE TIME OF TEXT, DON’T CALLERA: THE LOST SAD LAUGHTER CHAPTER
Fiction by Brian Alan Ellis“Sure, you probably published several books but the true highlight of your thirties so far has been you dismissively allowing your mind, body, and soul to gradually unravel like an old sweater.”… more
PLANTAINS
Fiction by Josh BoardmanThe plantain is black. It is black. It is black yet it has lightened. It is black yet it feels healthy elastic. The peel hardens up and goes cold. It is a black plantain yet there are signs of stirring life. New grassy hairs the color of wood shavings uncurl from the place where the… more
