genre: Fiction

Freak Out in a Moonage Suenos del Dia

Freak Out in a Moonage Suenos del Dia

By Margaret Elysia Garcia   

My mind was far away, thinking about how my big brothers were taking me out to Santa Monica for the Bowie show that night, when I heard it.


In the Sunday School

In the Sunday School

By Bryan Shawn Wang   

By the time Dalton D’Amico arrived, Miss Nugent already had the other children at their little tables coloring pictures of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount. She tried to keep their hands busy; you know what they said about idle hands.


The Body

The Body

By Robert Lopez   

We didn’t know what was wrong with the neighbors. Whenever we passed them in the halls they made a strange sound, like a hiss. They never looked us in the eye, either.


Had They Learned about Jayne Mansfield?

Had They Learned about Jayne Mansfield?

By Mardith Louisell   

I couldn’t go to a movie with a friend because I had to go to my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s daughter’s wedding. The movie was about a serial killer but it was French so I knew it would be okay …


What If

What If

By Christine McCarroll   

“If you were going to date a kitchen appliance, which would it be?” Zach is reading from a book of “what-ifs”—a gift from his little sister—as I drive us eighty miles east to his best friend Bobby’s house.


Ugly Girls

Ugly Girls

By Rochelle Spencer   

I was on Fulton buying gossip books—five for a dollar—when I ran into that actor, Lamont Evans. Didn’t see him right away, too busy staring at the cover of Mocha Dreams, a best-seller by January “Mocha” Jones, the video vixen who’d been married to seven different rappers, two at the same time.


Untitled Portrait, (Brother and Sister, 2009)

Untitled Portrait, (Brother and Sister, 2009)

By E.J. Anderson   

In a town of drunks, his mother was the town drunk. As the old joke goes, what’s the difference between a drunk and an alcoholic? About fifty thousand dollars a year.


Casual Impostor

Casual Impostor

By Thomas Benz   

Though he didn’t usually keep count, over the past couple years, Blake was sure he had been mistaken for someone else at least six times.


Too Young For The Blues

Too Young For The Blues

By Wesley Brown   

Sylvia never missed a chance to hear Ella Fitzgerald. That night’s appearance at the Apollo Theater was no exception.


Hannah Outside In

Hannah Outside In

By David Huddle   

With me, what you see is definitely not what you get. I never really meant to do it, but I just started out cultivating an appearance that conceals the truth about who I am.


The Red Hills

The Red Hills

By Jeffrey Ihlenfeldt   

Ciela tasted her lips as she lifted them from Zachary’s throat. Salt. At times, she confused her visions of salt and sand, salt and sun, naïve as they were, foolish as they were, with reality. But this was Zachary’s skin. His heat. His light. His salt.


The Rules of Tetherball

The Rules of Tetherball

By Marko Fong   

For the sixth recess in a row, I sit on the red bench just off the playground. I’m supposed to be answering Mrs. Hatfield’s questions about my grandfather. These are her questions for my “write about someone famous” homework.


A Long Walk

A Long Walk

By Chris Helvey   

Small scratchings began to filter through the quiet. I bent my neck and peered through the dimness. My wife was in our closet, pulling a blouse off a hanger. She had not turned on the overhead and there was something ghostlike in her movements, as if she had been there once but moved on, leaving behind only an outline of herself.


Pig-Wire

Pig-Wire

By Richard Hazen   

Sarah awoke to the sound of the hinges on the slab-planked door of her bedroom. In the dim light she could see her stepfather…


Earth Angel

Earth Angel

By Cruz Medina   

“Let’s see how fast she’ll go.”
No pudó creerlo . Eddie managed to fix up his old man’s Chevy, and now the wind was blowing through the open windows on him…


The Corn Maze

The Corn Maze

By James Cho   

Roger Weaver couldn’t understand why he had to meet his son’s principal when his wife, Myung-Jin, would be there too. What could Trevor have done to drag them both out of work?


The Television Thieves:  a novel excerpt

The Television Thieves: a novel excerpt

By Steven Huff   

Bobo had met Latch three and a half years before in a bar on Memmer St. on the east side. It was called Little Cairo, and Bobo hung out there because it was just a neighborhood waterhole: no known crooks…


Stockholm Syndrome

Stockholm Syndrome

By Benjamin Rybeck   

The bus line ran right into the suburb and stopped about a five-minute walk away from this old house of mine. I’d thrown away all my clothes…


Our Golden State

Our Golden State

By Fred Setterberg   

Dad towered above, hands on his hips, sunlight filtering through a cross-hatch of sycamore branches, his smooth, pink scalp illuminated and glistening with sweat.


The Edge

The Edge

By José Skinner   

Osvaldo and his homies’ favorite party spot was a place they called The Edge, on the rim of the Río Grande Gorge.


Remains From the Winking Place

Remains From the Winking Place

By Lisa Friedlander   

My body didn’t care that I had known he would die. My body planned to relive that moment often in the months to follow. My body had a memory that wouldn’t quit.


Kings

Kings

By Karima Grant   

Edward often searched for himself in Houraye’s hands. Soft, nut brown hands he marveled at,


The Dead Garden

The Dead Garden

By Sybil Wilen   

“If it rains in the dead garden, will the dead people drown?”


The Tomato Farm

The Tomato Farm

By N. J. Ayers   

Gnats clustered in noiseless aureoles about Jeannie’s father’s head as he dipped water from the barrel on the back of the flatbed truck and drank it in a tin cup.


Ice

Ice

By Michael Miner   

Where to begin? How about right now?

The Silk City Police Department. I am waiting in the police station in an interrogation room for my father to show up.


Alien Hand

Alien Hand

By Grace Talusan   

Before he left the Philippines to move in with his son, the American doctor, Titong made a bargain with himself: He would burn cigarettes on the tip of each finger before going back to his old ways. Yet, here he was, in his granddaughter’s room, beside her bed, in the middle of the night.


Decker

Decker

By James Sprouse   

We peeled off our rain gear at the back door of the Grant’s Pass Hotel, wrung the water out of our gloves, and traded our muddy boots for sneakers and moccasins. It wasn’t dark, but it might as well have been.


Street Theatre

Street Theatre

By Louis Panagotopulos   

When I was in college it was known as guerilla theatre. I saw a lot of it in Harvard Square – activists in mawkish costumes dramatizing social and political issues, small crowds of curious pedestrians stopping to hear diatribes like . . .


Pomegranate

Pomegranate

By Helen Elaine Lee   

(Excerpt from Life Without)   Choosing, it’s like a pomegranate fruit. Maxine talked one up once and when she did, I could almost taste it, almost hold it in my hands, like this.


Teggin

Teggin

By Karima Grant   

The yard was noisy, the women’s voices rising in unison, rising in dissension, rising sharply into the gathering night that had long ago chased away the men.


Zazz Zu Zazz

Zazz Zu Zazz

By Wesley Brown   

I’d stopped at a drugstore on 125th Street after school to buy some bubble gum when I heard a scuffle break out and a woman scream…


Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right

By Curtis Tompkins   

When I asked Bird if she would stay for good, she laughed and said You should know by now. Don’t you know what I’m thinking? This was after the fire…


Season of Giving

Season of Giving

By Roland Merullo   

It was the humblest of hometowns, but in a secret place inside himself he liked to think of it as The City By The Sea…


One Last Time

One Last Time

By Tanya Whiton   

“Danny died Tuesday,” Parker’s tight voice announces.

“I’m not having a good day,” I tell the answering machine, refusing to pick up…


Funeral Detail – April 2009 from We All Fall Down

Funeral Detail – April 2009 from We All Fall Down

By Brad Watts   

As the rain poured down, Justin was not looking forward to getting out of the van. He was not looking forward to playing the fake, electric, bugle for the hero that he was being paid fifty bucks to honor…