The Smell of Rain
by Michael Albanese
When he peels out of the motel parking lot, he fails to notice how the rusty, dry dust kicking up from threadbare tires, shines in the light of the Utahan …

Living Unitarian Universalist
by Beth Cortez-Neavel
This is how it begins, every time: whether I am at a potluck, a club, a bar, or with extended family. Someone ultimately asks me “So, what do you do?” I …

Don’t Let Them [Bite]
by Paden Fallis
…you understand, you’d be remiss if you actually thought you had this thing licked, right? Hubris before the fall, they say. Well it stands to reason here, sitting amongst piles …

Visiting with Oliver Stone
by John Bennett
Oliver Stone pulled up to the curb in front of my house at three in the morning in a limo facing the wrong way into traffic. He wasn’t driving, a …

The Old Anchor
by Kristian Meikop
The first sign of winter crawled in from the midnight sea in the shape of a furtive medieval fog. In the shared student apartments, maidens curled up against their lovers as …

SPANISH ARCHES
By Ruth Z. Deming
Quite a long time ago Norman would pick me up at the apartments and we’d drive around looking for a house. I’d never wanted one, really, too much bother. Let the …

Perfectly Imperfect
by Christine Geery
I bought a frozen pie shell today at the supermarket. This may not seem too noteworthy to some people, but believe me, in my world this is momentous. In the family I …

Butcher Luck
by Luke Crane
A hobbled man stood under the awning. He carried a baby Tamworth pig in a shopping bag and claimed to be going door to door, selling meat that he had butchered that …

Khmer.
by Shane Jesse Christmass
Out of the car park. The car even got a special bullet. Which is much-cubed eye down the south end of the town. Hath given up into the hand of tourist-watchers, a …

My Aunt Yola
by Brandon A.M.
Aunt Yola let her white neglige slip to the floor.
Steve and I had never seen a woman nude before. She was a big lady, a huge, fat cow of a woman, …

Catholic Prayers
by William J Fedigan
She opens the window. Then touches him. Ice cold. Good, she thinks. Thank God, she thinks. She spreads her fingers to cover his chest, to hear with her fingers if there …

The Girl from the Video Store
by Matthew Zanoni Müller
The aisles of the video store feel like a mausoleum of fantasies. Only the new releases in the front still hold their brightness. The older ones, stacked …

Little Novelty
by Noel Sloboda
Baba Yaga knew she was second string, destined for convenience stores and Dollarmarts. But a PEZ head still meant something. The old witch felt sure she was about to arrive. When she …

Fluorescence and a Bad Back
by Tina Weber
getting paid less to do more and being slowed down by maybes. the cheap idea from nine to six and the cloudy windows on a dirty alley. above the …

Danny
by Ryan Ritchie
My twin brother Daniel called to tell me he was dumping off his 12-year-old son Andrew with me for the weekend. Just like him, calling only when he needs something. Similar to when …

Bare Trees
by Janet Yung
The last leaf dropped from the ash tree in the back yard, grass and flower beds under deep cover from the tree’s debris.  Last week, before the rains came, the tree had …

Dirty, Stinking, Singing, Hippie Gypsies
by Elmore Snoody
The Dirty, Stinking, Singing, Gypsy Hippies, or The Dirty, Hopping, Stinking, Singing, Dancing Gypsy Hippies, were so named by the least stinking of the band of smelly songsters, a …

A Kiss.
by Dulce Maria Hernandez
My brain was a little off center, foggy as an El Norte San Francisco morning. I had a hangover, the first one in probably two, three years, the first one …

Faking It
by John Bennett
He wanted to give the impression that he was a fisherman, faking it was the one true thing he did. It was like playing with fire from a safe distance, poking the …

In the Heat of the Night.
by Rory Byrnes
The date: Sometime and Somewhere December, 2010. It seemed almost like a dream. It was all a blur. The people were swirling around me. They were talking, dancing …

Nose Candy in the Home of the Bravo Network
by T.M. Weber
shake me to wake me, like taking showers in the middle of the night. and doodle on hotel napkins or the skin of strangers. breasts …

Hypochondriac
by Timothy Bearly
I examine the mole on my left shoulder to conclude that it looks rather strange. It sort of resembles a pencil eraser, with coarse edges, blackish coloration. Oh my god! I just looked …

The Mexican Godfather
by Kenneth Sibbett
Kevin was awakened by voices from another room. He was tied to a chair, gagged and blindfolded. His mouth tasted of blood and the feelings in his arms was gone. He …

Her Head Sounserals Away
by Shawn Misener
He screws on his hat until it clicks into place. His child’s head is loose and keeps sliding off the neck pole. He tries seven times to secure her …

GAMMERMAN’S CHOICE
by Paul Beckman
Gammerman knew that he shouldn’t send the email, he even paused and said to himself, “Gammerman, don’t send that email.” And then he hit the send key. That in a …

Transpositions
by Noel Sloboda
Once, three brothers from the country decided to enter a very famous pie-eating contest. The event was held annually at the capital, and it drew participants and spectators from all over the globe. …

Deafen A Room
by Harutyun Mackoushian
A strange impulse and dusts on the fingertips, are the only alive things that remained in the wave, which is switching me to an empty space,the need to wash the dirty …

American Gulag
by Frank Scarangello
It’s a seven by twelve foot concrete room measured by placing my feet one in front of the other and pacing back and forth over the concrete floor for years …

As he swept the dead leaves into a pile by the chain-link fence separating his house from mine the fall leaves continued to spiral down around him. He didn’t look up. He didn’t stop. He didn’t even acknowledge that they were ceaselessly dropping from the trees. He just kept sweeping in slow, small strokes.

The Vital Sound
by Nicholas Su
If I knew that you’d come back some day, I’d just go on waiting. In the end, there’s no doubt in my mind that if we had just one chance …