by Neil Weiner
I lie on my back staring at the ceiling, the names circling like military rotor blades that won’t shut off.
Apache.
Black Hawk.
Kiowa.
Chinook.
Iroquois.
Cayuse.
Sioux.
Shawnee.
Choctaw.
Cheyenne.
Lakota.
Each one lands heavier than the last. They call them machines, but I hear nations. Histories. People who bled, who prayed, who endured. Now their names are stamped onto gunships cutting through the sky.
Read More »by Maysam Kandej and Bill Tope
Maysam was a writer from Iran. For three months, he had dreamed of this trip. He had met an American writer, Mr. Robert Hawley, online. They emailed about books and writing. One day, Mr. Hawley kindly invited Maysam to visit him in America.
Now, Maysam was here. On his second night, he was invited to dinner at the Hawleys’ large, beautiful home in an exclusive gated community known as The Village. He was nervous. As a Muslim, he did not eat pork or drink alcohol, but he did not want to explain his religion. He wanted to be a normal guest.
Read More »by Foster Trecost
It was my first day.
Awkward introductions. Handshakes held a second too long. Then parked in a cubicle. The computer insisted on my attention, but the desk drawers won that battle. I pulled open the top. Empty, except for a few paperclips. Nothing in the next. The bottom bin, larger than the first two, contained only a coiled ethernet cable. I moved to close it, but stopped. Something more. Beneath the cable, a folded note. Hard-pressed pencil. Block letters.
Read More »by Randall Amster
I awaken every day knowing that one thing will be different—one item out of place, one song lyric changed, one person here or not, one event remembered differently by others, one part of myself altered in a way that only I would notice. I’ve named this experience temporal arrhythmia because it sounds cool and smart and sciency, but I have no idea what it all really means in any tangible sense.
Read More »by Debbi Voisey
I remember your feet coming from me; the first thing I saw. And your screams and your crumpled face.
A breech birth, and ever after, different to everyone.
Read More »by Matias Travieso-Diaz
Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o’clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo.
– Georges Bidault
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
– George Carlin
The sudden banging on the front door startled Ricardo, who was not expecting visitors that early in the morning. His first instinct was to flee, but there was no back door through which he could escape, and his two-room apartment had nowhere to hide. He approached the door and asked: “Who is it?”
“It’s the Posse! Open up!”
Ricardo opened the door and was shoved aside as four armed men wearing brown military fatigues entered and encircled him. “Are you Ricardo Trovador?” asked their leader. “Yes, I am. But…” started Ricardo.
“Mr. Trovador, you are under arrest. You have ten minutes to get dressed and contact any friends or relatives.”
Read More »by P. A. Farrell
No one told me I would be using a walker, hunched over those curved aluminum handles and hoping the brakes on the wheels would hold, but that’s life. You never know what it’s going to throw at you, and you’ve got to be ready to catch it with both hands and draw it toward your chest so it doesn’t fall to the floor. But today, the bus jostled, slamming me into a pole. A man sneered at me, “They shouldn’t let people like you on the bus!” Yeah, people like me, with walkers.
A slow slog from the bus stop sends stabs of pain to my ankle, but I push on. Good thing my folding friend has wheels. I don’t think I could pick it up. Each slab of the sidewalk is daring me forward. The beast is waiting, and I’ve got to gather my strength, so I take it slow to save my breath and prepare.
Read More »by Stacia Laroche
Back when I was a 12-year old living in the warm rays of my youthful golden days, I used to sit on my rickety front porch steps with a disposable camera in hand taking pictures of every classic car that drove down our suburban street. The first car I ever captured was a 1957 Buick Roadmaster.
I was captivated by that car because driving it in a time period that it didn’t belong in meant you were taking a risk. It was a deep green, the same shade that belonged to leaves in the forest after returning from the winter. The kind you don’t remember seeing blossom. All of a sudden they’re just there again.
Read More »by Chase Wootton
As I looked over the bridge, hundreds of feet above the waters, I couldn’t decide which was more beautiful: her, or the sunset. It unfolded in front of me — a splash of red, gold, and orange across the sky, as if a godly chef had sprinkled oranges, pineapples, and cherries across the heavens. The wind was cool and peaceful, the sky clear of rain, snow, or dreary weather. In front of me, there was only beauty, only color, only depth of goodness.
Read More »by Hachi Chuku
April Elizabeth Randall was the kind of girl that you just couldn’t help yourself being endeared to. Her delicate saccharine features complemented her sanguine personality so that you couldn’t frown at her for longer than a few seconds. When she turned to walk away, you dreamt of the moment in which your paths might cross again. I met her at the library in my hometown of Manhattan, Kansas when the leaves were still a brilliant green; not yet blushing from the promise of winter. I had a job working at the library on the campus of Kansas State, a work study position that allowed me to have my nose in a book when I wasn’t manning the shelves or doing sudoku puzzles.
She walked up to me carefully, wearing an orange tube top and high waisted flared jeans and asked me gently where she could find books on houseplant keeping.
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