I should have known it wasn’t going to end well when Sheila switched from strawberry wine coolers to boilermakers. But, I’ll admit it, I was sort of enjoying the dent she was putting in Greeley’s cocktail party, the brittle smiles and edgy eyes on the faces of his guests, a cross-section of stuffed shirts from […]

On his second day sailing from Tampa Bay northwest across the Gulf of Mexico, Dawson Melburn spotted a massive container ship coming out of the fog on his port side. The baritone blast from its horn echoed across the water, causing Daw to jerk the tiller. He immediately came about, not wanting to play chicken […]

I am ten and there is a barbecue at our house and Dad complains of a headache which is weird because he never complains and goes up to his bedroom to rest which is weird because it’s the middle of the afternoon but he is joking with his friends and he looks happy. The next […]

I thought Jesus had blown out my tire like taking aim with a rubber band across the median a line between homosexual thoughts SNAP homosexual actions one last warning shot before damnation I felt the thunk before I saw it shaking the entire Subaru thick black rubber spiraling off behind me in the rearview mirror […]

I choose the vernacular of dance—a small silent s, and sway with you in oceanic nothingness like an aquatic spirit, ethereal, letting form define me. I do not have to speak. In the curve of your body, there is no such thing as secret. I know you without knowing. A mystery— each morning, you appear, […]

The woods are ablaze. We sweat in our greens and yellows, digging a line amidst clouds of fire-chaser beetles. Our arms become our Pulaski’s as we hew to the black. At first, we took selfies of the flames shooting from our drip torches, the pines combusting. But when the burned deer and bear cubs limped […]

In the beginning, there was lite beer & fried chicken, a potato salad with   too much mayonnaise, a couch-bound man chained to college pigskins. There was a myth   … [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

A mammoth grub. A glazed croissant. Everything you wish had come full circle. A boat of ghosts rerouted by Charon. The concluding parentheses you always forget to add. Hope’s rib. A winter runner’s frosty eyelash. Your first sledding hill. One of God’s alleles. The toggle of a … [Click here to purchase a copy of […]

Red Canna, Georgia O’Keefe, 1924 You, stranger, beside me on the hard, wood bench, lift your eyes to the canvas mirror on the dead white wall—my garden plot, my solitary blossom bed. Petal portal flames feral red. It is always summer here, and every color layers fire, even chalk-white curves and fecund violet. Fix your […]

Mama Marilyn! Look over here! No Mama! Not there, over here! I hear my children giggling as I follow their voices inducing me through the passageways of my childhood house. The pitted walls are painted magnolia-white and the white carnations Daddy bought are dry like tongues in a chipped, blue vase along the corridor cluttered […]

You taught me the meaning of transgress, not the dictionary gloss but averted glances at the bar where we sat in our darkened corner sipping another black beer as if anti-miscegenation laws still hovered in the Southern air. You tweaked my learning curve later … [Click here to purchase a copy of the magazine]

Cool coffee, coagulated, the last few sips before third shift starts, tasting tobacco leaves in everything. Three packs a day, trying to hide her habit from her mom, whose grandson smells like he’s the one smoking. Monotonous factory line, tobacco bander for down market brands, not one smoked to celebrate a marriage or a new […]

Grey glinting all around you, like the inside of a gun barrel illumined, how many steps will you pace in this greasy kitchen’s stacked circumference? How many tasks to pass the fullness of a day? In the hewing of tomatoes into flat wet wheels, in portioning hamburg like frankenstein fingerprinting brains, you become lost. You […]

NOON – Late twenties, they/them, peace and love and breathing it in, deeply humanist. JACOB – Early thirties, he/him, resourceful and ambitious, but also deeply sensitive. MADISON – Late twenties, she/her, anxious and a bit of a perfectionist, but deeply loving in her own way.   The first week of January. Public transit train noises. […]

CHARACTERS: TATER……………man, 70s, Vietnam veteran, any race MONICA…………woman, mid 30s, attractive but worn out, any race TIME: 2019 (pre-pandemic) PLACE: Any town USA   AS HOUSE LIGHTS GO DOWN, we hear SFX of a car screeching around a corner, excited teenaged voices, and a bottle hitting an object, then smashing on the ground as the […]

A year after my father died, my wife demanded that I see a therapist, an idea to which I wasn’t averse given the positive outcomes from counseling I’d experienced at shaky moments in my past.  Michelle and I had spent my father’s last full night with him in his hospital room where I believe to […]