Emma Copley Eisenberg, “Ray’s Birthday Bar” “At Ray’s Birthday Bar, we specialize in birthdays. A free shot if you can show me a driver’s license that proves it’s your day, two free ones if the address on said license is South Philadelphia, and if you’re a lifer with ten years of loyal patronage, the number’s three, and Ray will turn on the disco ball. I read somewhere that you have to get twenty-three people in the same room before there is a fifty percent chance that two of them will have … [Read more...] about ISSUE 65 – The Emerging Writers Issue
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ISSUE 64 – The Novella Issue
Max Ross, “Nobody Remains in the Garden” “No, it wasn’t raining yet. But the clouds were coming in, and Mark Ross, convinced that rainfall contributed to his baldness (he’d read about this in one of the three newspapers he subscribed to), popped open his umbrella. As they walked around the lake, his and his wife’s shoulders touched beneath its dark green canopy, which fluttered slightly, like a wing, in the pre-drizzle breeze. There wasn’t much hair left to protect—a sparse brown-gray … [Read more...] about ISSUE 64 – The Novella Issue
ISSUE 63 – Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Issue
Bret Anthony Johnston, “Half of What Atlee Rouse Knows About Horses” “His daughter’s first horse came from a traveling carnival where children rode him in miserable clockwise circles. He was swaybacked with a patchy coat and split hooves, but Tammy fell for him on the spot, and Atlee made a cash deal with the carnie. A lifetime ago, just outside Robstown, Texas. Atlee managed the stables west of town; Laurel, his wife, taught lessons there. He hadn’t brought the trailer—buying a pony hadn’t … [Read more...] about ISSUE 63 – Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Issue
ISSUE 62
Porochista Khakpour, “Kingdoms” “Years after it happened, her rapist was trying to get in contact with her. In the same week her dog arrived. Lucy called the local Greyhound Rescue chapter months before. She had filled out an application promising that she would be able to walk it at least three times a day, that she would never let it off a leash, that she would feed it regularly, that she would return it immediately should she no longer be able to act as a capable owner. She had had a … [Read more...] about ISSUE 62
ISSUE 66
Jamel Brinkley, “Wolf and Rhonda” “The reunion happened in the party room of the Tavern on Bruckner. Balloons floated to the low ceiling above the heads of St. Paul's Class of 1991. The elderly priest sat in a corner, nodding helplessly at his lap. Old rap songs from twenty years ago, when they were in high school, played from the wall-mounted speakers. The frosted white cake would have stripes of pineapple filling between its layers. It was always this way at their reunions. Maritza Lopez … [Read more...] about ISSUE 66
ISSUE 67
Mark Mayer, “The Clown” “Cruelty and pain were easy quantities, but murder used to express something in him. Take the kings of Greece and Persia who entertained guests with hollow bronze bulls that seemed to bay when wheeled over a fire, when in fact it was condemned queens screaming from inside. It was cruel, it was painful—but it was so kingly too. The court clapping and marveling, pretending they didn’t know, while the king spat seeds from his grapes. The Aztecs murdered like Aztecs, the … [Read more...] about ISSUE 67