Literary as hell.

Category: Writing (Page 11 of 50)

“White Rabbit,” a short story by Katie Nickas

It occurred to me at some point during our second date that Mike might not exist in real time.

When we first met, he seemed friendly—cruelty-free, like a human-sized rabbit. We ate at Lenny’s Subs off I-35. On the way, he wheeled his big, white Texas truck backwards through the drive-thru of a shuttered restaurant. It seemed like the perfect accident—a ploy to make me accept his wonky habits.

Waiting in line at the shop, he cracked jokes that made me roll with laughter. I told him I used to work there—that I was once a struggling sandwich artist who was so busy fixing cold cuts and meatball marinara, I hardly had time to sit down and eat them. Continue reading

“Dog Walks Itself,” a poem by Oak Ayling

I’m dreaming
Always
Of my grandparents
My preacher
Of you as a small boy
The nights are days
Of finding you all
In turns
And patterns
Fields and haunts
Unearthing
Old treasures
And smiling
They minister
To the migratory in me
But you look at me
Helpless
As a broken-winged bird
And I’m trying to figure out
How to mend you.

 


Oak Ayling is an English poet whose work, both current & forthcoming, can be found in the Literary Magazines Anti Heroin Chic, From Whispers to Roars, Foxglove Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Memoir Mixtapes & in print anthologies ‘For the Silent’ from Indigo Dreams Publishing & ‘Light Through the Mist’ from author Helen Cox.
Follow her on Twitter @OakAyling and on Instagram @oakayling

“Dr. Sammy,” a short story by Michael Paige

I stare at the corpse in the mirror. How desperately the dry, clay-colored skin clings to its skull. Rubbery. How narrow its tired eyes are, weighed down by the dark satchels hanging from them. How many broken vessels I could count beneath its sullen cheeks. A nebula of spider veins. A paint-splattered canvas. Children do not want to see this.

I am the owner of this dead reflection.

Hello, world.

Continue reading

“Flight” by Joshua Buchin

airplaneOne time Lee actually screamed on an airplane. It had been one of those horrible situations with a seemingly endless delay on the runway and he had fallen asleep before the plane took off. He awoke to the unsettling bumps and skips of the plane lifting off in bad weather, shaking and dipping erratically. It had not been a conscious decision, the scream. He simply woke and screamed simultaneously, all at once, before he even knew what he was doing. He was 32 at the time. He had a middle seat. To his left on the aisle was an old lady who smiled sadly at him. Next to him on the window seat was his girlfriend of the past two years, Katherine. Continue reading

“Garbage People” by Emma Miller

garbage
It’s 2018 and we’re garbage people now, management tells us at the morning meeting. “Not garbage men,” Larry stresses. He strokes his Pomeranian, which is wriggling in his arms. “Garbage people.”

 

I look from Duke on my left to John on my right, then raise my hand. “But we are garbage men,” I say.  

 

“Shut up, Mick,” Larry snaps. The dog yaps. “You are a person, and what you think doesn’t matter.”

Continue reading

“The Blenderizing of the American Family” by May Wescott

Divorce is final and clean on paper.  But when there are kids involved, no judge in the world has the power to sever the bonds between two people who have entwined DNA walking around as a constant reminder that, despite the formality of the notarized seal on the decree, they will never really be divorced from each other

“Blended” is the fictitious term we use to describe families created out of the ragged stump of divorce.

When you make a cake, you “blend” the ingredients. It’s such a gentle process that you can do it easily with the rounded edges of a wooden spoon. Methodical, harmonious, smooth strokes of the spoon combine the disparate elements into a tranquil, pliable batter. Continue reading

“I Will Never Die,” a short story by Richard Charles Schaefer

Photo Credit: Brian Michael Barbeito

Charles couldn’t believe he had slept through dinner again; he was going to have to beg Phil or one of the Korean kids for ramen, and why should they give him anything? If the ladder had been in its hiding spot under the patio of the on-campus daycare, he could have gotten onto the roof of the gym and across it to the admin building to see if he could find anything to eat in the small kitchen there, but without the ladder he couldn’t get onto the roof, unless he had Andrew to boost him up. Andrew must have moved it while Charles was suspended, or else it got confiscated. That’s okay, they’d fished it out of a dumpster anyway; they found good stuff in the dumpster by the maintenance building all the time, but he sure wasn’t going to find dinner there. Continue reading

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