I become more incoherent as each day I am less understood. I say so little I have nothing left to say. Words flutter from my life like trapped birds frantic to escape, a blur of good intentions poised in flight, Cassandra scrawls in her notebook. Then she stops, afraid she is headed nowhere, where the Mad … Continue reading
Category Archives: Fiction 2012
Shutters — Nathan Alling Long
The rain has ceased. Outside, each leaf still holds a single drop and the windows are spotted with water. A dog, left out in the rain, barks now to be let in. Cars pass in front of the house, their tires sounding like waves breaking the shore. I eat tiny squares of chocolate, with a … Continue reading
In The People’s Art Museum — M. Kaat Toy
/ / become more incoherent as each day I am less understood. I say so little I have nothing left to say. Words flutter from my life like trapped birds frantic to escape, a blur of good intentions poised in flight, Cassandra scrawls in her notebook. Then she stops, afraid she is headed nowhere, where … Continue reading
Varieties of Diets — Kevin Griffith
Doesn’t everyone know that if you eat just one of one thing you’ll lose weight? He’ll, it would be cardboard. The question is, how long can you go on doing it? Citrus The grapefruits are tumbling. Or, rather, rumbling. Or both. Some described the scene when we opened the door of the dilapidated trailer home … Continue reading
I Wish I Could Say I Loved You — Shelly King
They were not lovers. Kenny made a point of explaining that to the hospice staff. Charles was always particular about their relationship being properly understood. Kenny was his roommate, his grocery-shopper, his prescription-fetcher, his bathroom-cleaner, and, in the backside of their forties, his comrade in Male Menopause. In the AIDS support group where they had … Continue reading
The Missing — Benjamin Arda Doty
As two years passed, Sibel asked the same questions about her missing son. Where was Fikret? What terrible thing had happened to him? It terrified her to think of it, and it had tired her out. It was worse, in some ways, than actually knowing he had died would have been. She could the sell … Continue reading
PK — Ellen Burns
She was crying, telling me about how, where, and when Jesus had touched her. I’m not good with emotions—never have been—so I didn’t really know what to do. I just froze up as if I’d been caught doing something shameful. This was a lot more than I’d bargained for. They hadn’t taught us how to … Continue reading
Aryan Jew — Adam Berlin
We’d been away to the Holy Land. It was our father’s sabbatical year and he’d decided to spend it in Israel. The first day of school some punk named Boaz practiced his English on me and told me to go fock myself, the word mispronounced but the message clear. I let it go. He didn’t … Continue reading
Cathedral of Cotton — Liz Gaffney
1. Emmalee crawls into her hideaway. It is made of soft stuff stolen from about the house. A shower rod is the highest beam of her cathedral of blankets and pillows. She took the rod down. All. By. Herself. Lying on her back. Dyed fabrics, stitched together into a quilt, soft and squishy as the … Continue reading
All the Same — Paul Many
I was standing outside the emergency room door waiting on one of my men who fell into an open trench and busted up his collarbone (which is another story in itself), when Carl, the ambulance driver, tells me “Leland, you’ve got to come and see this.” And here they got this little kid on a … Continue reading
Coe Review 