Tag: fiction

  • Hear What We Want

    Fiction by Jason Graff The Alley It wasn’t a garbage truck. Dad would show down against anything else: cars, SUVs, other pickups too. Beeping and cursing until they pulled into the nearest driveway or better yet, backed completely out into the street. The engine growled the whole time. He’d complain to the air afterwards about…

  • The Ties That Bind

    Fiction by Colin Brightwell My half-brother’s parole officer called me up. Said Sean was getting out of the joint and had listed me as next-of-kin, that he needed a place to stay while he reentered society. I hadn’t seen the kid since he was a baby. Our old man, the bastard, died halfway through Sean’s…

  • Where All the Heat Is

    Fiction by Hannah Hollifield You start your period twenty minutes before Vacation Bible School. Your momma comes into the bathroom, hands you a tampon, and shows you how to stick the blue applicator in and send the cotton up. Then she hurries and y’all have to leave because the women’s study group is cooking the…

  • You Lament The Lack Of Asian Actors In American Cinema

    Fiction by Eliot Li In your shopping cart at Safeway: a 10-pack of Top Ramen; jumbo box of Depends Undergarments that Grandma asked you to buy; AA batteries for your malfunctioning answering machine; this week’s SF Bay Guardian with Bruce Lee on the cover; and a pleasure pack of Trojans, because even though you’re single…

  • Boys on the Bridge

    Fiction by Jon Sokol Sebastian’s phone buzzed in his pocket at 4:20. He glanced over at his grandmother who sat on the crippled couch.  Her hands were buried in the pockets of her threadbare house coat and she seemed completely engrossed in the slap fight taking place on Springer.  Carly was lying on the floor…

  • Along the Wires

    Fiction by Amelia Franz On one side of the register stood miniature bottles of Fireball and Jack Daniels, on the other a stack of fundraising flyers for the family of a man killed out on 182, rear-ended by an over weight cane truck bound for the Raceland mill. Greer refilled the scratch-off dispenser case, then…

  • The Mayor of Leicester

    Fiction by Julia Watson The mayor had gone missing. Nobody had seen him in over a week. In a town as far-reaching as Leicester, it was custom to spot one’s neighbor only at the Ingles. The land was large, well-soiled. Horses and goats and chickens mingled and mozied across fenced hillocks, while their keepers kept…

  • The Girl on the Unicycle

    Autofiction by Jay Parr CN for racism and hate speech. Me and Jimmy was riding bikes first time I seen her. It was last weekend of summer break, school starting back up in a couple days hanging over our heads like a goddamn prison sentence, so we was living life, reckless, desperate, like we ain’t…

  • That Bottle Green Phone Call, 2006

    Fiction by Elissa Field It’s expensive to get the phone activated for international roaming but, late after midnight – so late that I have to ask the hotel clerk to unlock the door with the distinct risk I might not be let in again before dawn – I’d got desperate with waiting for news and…

  • Something About Unconditional Love

    Fiction by Steve Passey Can you give Bevan a ride, she asks me? Sure, why not, I say. It’s the July long weekend, and hot even in the early evening shade. It’s the first holiday I have spent with her and her family and in the heat of the day, and over a few beers…