by Jennifer Spiegel nipples beads mealie pap The television is on and there are reports of war. Zaire will be the Congo by the time I leave South Africa. Everyone sits around, drinking coffee, reading books, playing cards, rolling joints, writing memoirs. Everyone in hostels is always writing. The sizzle of static is on the [...]
Yearly Archives: 2003
The Spike and Martha Show by Gabriella Herkert
by Gabriella Herkert My the world has changed. We’ve gone to war. Dot.com has gone bust. As each of our political or cultural icons has fallen in the path of bankruptcy, scandal or SEC investigation I couldn’t help thinking about the moment of innocence just before the crash. Months before the papers were full of [...]
Cal by Vincent Czyz
by Vincent Czyz An excerpt from his novel, Ghost Dancer Uncle Cal never brought Logan a thing Logan’s mother hadn’t put him up to buying. Nothing Logan wanted anyway. Cal had been too busy getting rid of things, selling them off for liquor money. Unless it was something he’d killed. Nothing Cal liked better than [...]
Ghost Disease by Julie Danho
by Julie Danho The Allman Brothers wailed endlessly about “Elizabeth.” I was half asleep when a man, weaving through the maze of blankets, stumbled over my legs. He raised his hands in apology. I stood up to try and catch sight of my mother, who had wandered away for a “better view.” At six feet [...]
Bedfellows by Jim Ruland
by Jim Ruland For the sex-starved sailors of the seventh fleet all roads lead to Tijuana, and no one loved TJ more than Carter. Everybody knew he had a thing for Mexican whores, and whenever someone accompanied Carter to TJ, they always came back with sordid stories about the things they’d seen him do, but [...]
Sophia, An Excerpt by K.L. Nappier
by K.L. Nappier PROLOGUE Yah-weh. What happened to Your promise? When I was young, when I was still called Sarai, I took my husband into me on our wedding night, sure of children to come. Abram, so young himself, though ten years my senior; strong and atop me and below me and inside me. Brother. [...]
Learning to Driveby Gabriella Herkert
by Gabriella Herkert ‘We’re gonna take the car to the store.’ Allie’s not askin’. She never asks. She just tells. It’s okay ‘cuz she has good ideas, but then we get in trouble. I don’t like being in trouble. She says I’m a scaredy cat baby but I’m not. I just don’t like it when [...]
Systematic Desensitization by Ed Peaco
Ed Peaco One summer night in the not-too-distant but long-forgotten past, when Max Headroom was a cult hit on television and the home-improvement boom was in its infancy, a dense whine haunted Duane Dyer’s dreams. As his sleep receded, the noise grew louder, and at last he bolted from bed and followed the roar through [...]
Confession By Laura C. Alonso
By Laura C. Alonso Tomorrow, they’d bury their daughter . . . and still, so many questions. Why would a beautiful fourteen-year-old choose for herself such a horrible, painful death? In life, she appeared the antithesis of suicidal ideation: excellent grades, well-liked in school and community, babysitting neighbors’ children, teaching Sunday School to three and [...]
Just Temporaryby W. A. Smith
(A memoir in progress) by W. A. Smith Prologue My father died as the sun rose on Easter morning, 1979. Months before, in a halting progression that reminded me of the lights in a house flickering out one by one, room by room, he had lost the ability to move under his own power or [...]