Inn Of The Flying Plates – Sheila MacAvoy
Tuesday, January 3, 2012 13:29 — 3 Comments
She sat in the front seat of the Volvo and opened the L.A. Times as he inched down the driveway and avoided the branches of the pittosporum that needed pruning. She looked up once to admire the sleek lawn and the planting of daffodils that made their house look like an English cottage. Then she heard his intake of breath, as if he were about to comment on those offending shrubs, but thought better of it because they were officially not speaking. It had started last week. An argument over the replacement of the broken television in the family room. […]
The Picker – John Himmelheber
Tuesday, December 27, 2011 9:37 — 1 Comment
After both are done with work and school, the father meets his son at the club’s driving range, and says to his son: The man in the picker is your target, my boy. Hit him as hard as you can. We haven’t much daylight left. But Father, he moves in slow flowing motions over the berms and around the sand bunkers. I like the way the picker dances, and its disks pluck the balls and comb the grass smooth. I don’t want to hurt the man inside or interrupt the dance. That is nonsense, my boy. He no more dances […]
Want, Have, Need – Eileen Bordy
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 14:21 — 0 Comments
Sarah’s old Toyota labored up the steep highway. Every ten miles or so, she had to pull onto a dusty shoulder to let faster cars pass. Her father had offered to buy her a new car, but this fifteen-year-old, 4-cylinder Corolla was fitting for a grad student, although she was cursing it now as she slid around on the moist vinyl seat waiting for the pickup pulling a horse trailer to go around her. Two meaty horse’s hindquarters were visible above the Dutch door of the trailer, and their feathery tails waved at her mockingly. The air was a bit […]
White Cap – Ric Hoeben
Tuesday, December 13, 2011 13:55 — 2 Comments
Grandma Dorris sat there human with some amount of stillness and the frail. Her summer hat was a delicate lavender, her bathing suit navy. She stared out, deep—past her little grandson on the beach—looking over all the merging foam of the restless ocean, and from time to time, she’d pull her neck back in pain toward the beach house behind and hope to come upon her daughter, bouncing down the sandbank with maybe one more cold mimosa for her. “I want my ‘puter, Mima.†Dorris looked at the screaming child down there in the sand. His blonde hair had become […]
My Aunt Yola – Brandon A.M.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011 13:17 — 0 Comments
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, and Uncle Bob had been asleep for hours at that point. And she motioned for us to follow her, but I didn’t know what to do. Steve moved forward. Aunt Yola placed a stale donut in a napkin and left it on the TV tray. She said that it was for me, and it was okay to be scared because the brave were ignorant. She took Steve into […]
Cold Cheesecake – Dan Pfaff
Tuesday, November 29, 2011 13:02 — 2 Comments
I say to my wife I want to buy a motorcycle because it makes me feel better knowing I have one. Five years ago I sold mine to a teenager who handed me over three thousand dollars for it. I told myself it was the responsible thing to do. “We’ve been over this. Even if we could afford it, you’d run into a tree and leave me alone to raise the kids. You’re not twenty-five anymore. And even when you were twenty-five you weren’t capable enough to do the things you did then. You were lucky,†she says. “You’d be […]
Guido In Hell – James Brantingham
Tuesday, November 22, 2011 13:38 — 0 Comments
It was the morning of the spring equinox, a Friday. Guido’s room grew dim. As total darkness filled his room, a light appeared. It was not the sun. His apartment faced west. The light beckoned Guido: “Come in, come in.†He sensed that his life was being drawn slowly towards the light–a warm, soft and tempting light. The light eased his fears. Then his heart stopped. At once the warm welcoming light faded. He saw shapes, shadows surrounding him, restless souls left to wander an empty, skyless world. Murmurs and desperate sighs drifted without purpose like cigarette smoke in a […]
Simon Of The Desert – Susan Levi Wallach
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 13:17 — 0 Comments
Simon read the email several times. He stared at it, seeing not the words but the spaces between them, looking at the screen as if it were a newly discovered Caravaggio and he the curator. He stood up and walked to the window, turned around and went back to his desk, where he sat again, looking for the word he was certain was missing. Your wife is having an affair, the message read. A typo, surely, Simon thought. A mistake. The sender must have meant to insert the critical not within that compound verb — Your wife is not having […]
High Fidelity – Mark Hage
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 12:44 — 1 Comment
He held a copy of Barthelme’s Forty Stories. She sat across with husband and baby carriage. They went home. She rolled the infant toward him. She opened the door and left. That night, in a spare bedroom, the husband saw her with a book. What are you reading, he said. She looked up. She did not answer. This is the book that man was reading on the subway, the husband said. The man who got out on 51st. A child wept. She scanned the titles. Past the midpoint, she stopped at The Temptation of St. Anthony and started to read.
Monarch in Glorious Physicality
Sunday, November 6, 2011 23:23 — 2 Comments
We are delighted to announce the arrival of our debut print edition! Soon it will be available in bookstores all across Seattle, but for now you can order through our home page. If you want the full physical effect (free from digital mediation of any sort), please join us for our release party, November 20th, 8:00-11:00pm at The Pub at 3rd Place Books, 6504 20th Ave. NE (on the corner of 65th and 20th). We’ll have plenty of copies waiting (sans shipping charges). Jim Brantingham, Rebecca Hoogs, Rebecca Bridge, Jed Myers, Zac Hill, Jason Whitmarsh and Julie Larios will read their inspiring […]
What am I?
Bioluminescent eye
That sees by the shine
Of its own light. Lies
Blind me. I am the seventh human sense
And my stepchild,
Consequence;
Scientists can't find me.
Januswise I make us men;
Glamour
Was my image then—
Remind me:
The awful fall up off all fours
From the forest
To the hours…
Tick, Tock: Divine me.
-- Richard Kenney
