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The Color of Bones
Fiction by Paul J. Garth Night I drove back, somewhere around Wichita, when the sun was falling off to the west, I realized I’d forgotten what my father’s face looked like. It’d been seven years since I’d last seen him, and aside from his phone call a few nights before, and the times I heard…
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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…
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Cornbread, Piss, and Figs: An Essay on Grief and Home
By Jessica Cory It’s nearing 8:30 PM the Sunday before Spring Equinox when I find myself in the darkened backseat of my husband’s red Outback weaving through the Blue Ridge Mountains with a hunk of cornbread in my left hand as my right rests on a bucket quarter-full of undiluted, pungent, piss. A note on…
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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…
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AITA: Am I the Asshole For Not Walking Away From Omelas
Creative Nonfiction by Paul Crenshaw I, (51 M), was born and raised in Omelas, and have lived here all my life. It is a beautiful town, bright-towered by the sea. The Festival of Summer arrives and the bells ring and under the great avenues of trees the stately processions begin. There is music, dancing. Arts…
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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…
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I Know a Man
CNF by Kevin Brennan I know a man who will do things for you. Things you don’t want to do. I know a man who will get down and dirty. He’ll gird up for it, he’ll suit himself in hazmat skin. He’ll strap on goggles. He’ll tape his pant legs to his rubber boots. He’ll…
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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…
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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…
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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…