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.
genre: Fiction
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
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?
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
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
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)
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
By Karima Grant
Edward often searched for himself in Houraye’s hands. Soft, nut brown hands he marveled at,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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…
Long Gone, a Tamara Hayle Mystery — Chapter One
By Valerie Wilson Wesley
I was Pet Hayle’s one and only call, which shocked the hell out of me…
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
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
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…
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