“Let’s do it now, then,” he says.

HIS WIFE LEAVES HIM by Stephen Dixon (excerpt)

This is one of his favorite memories of her. He’d just got off the elevator on her floor, was going to ring her doorbell. He had a key to her apartment, which she’d given him a few weeks before—two months after they’d started seeing each other—but it still didn’t feel right using it if he […]

“Whatever you do,” Arlie said, “don’t shoot the dog."

BUZZY IN VERMONT by Jessica Anya Blau

 * For my grandparents: Jimmie and Arlie Robitzer *      Buzzy had a Volkswagen Bug that Shecky Freeman sold him for $380.00. There was a hole the size of a saucer in the floor of the backseat.   When Louise turned in her seat, looked down at the hole and watched the grey and brown road […]

a soul to back me up

TWO POEMS by Edward Perlman

THE BUS STOP PARK Of all the crazy things I’ve seen along the path that hacks the corner off the bus stop park, a plot of die-hard ivy beneath a gingko tree where bits of colored glass shimmer like jewels the forty thieves have dropped, this one takes the cake. Trust me; I’ve seen some […]

he knew he didn’t have much time left to tell anything

CAPTAIN’S COFFEE by Charles Talkoff

He worked for a long time as the skipper of a fishing boat out of Alaska and when I knew him he was one of those almost old men you meet from time to time usually in bars that have gone from pleasant to seedy when you weren’t looking; the type of man who was […]

All the old haunts that are now ours...

UNDERSTUDY by B.J. Hollars

THIS IS THE ONE WHERE YOU SAY YES I get in my car and drive to you.  You are not far, and when I sneak from my house in the nighttime, the motion light forgets its sacred duty.  I am a shadow, but soon I am a shadow in a car, and then I am […]

Yet an unseen power pulled us back...

A QUARTET OF GHOSTS by Ann Eichler Kolakowski

I. Charles Keys: At the Wheelwright’s Shop My job was one of arcs and angles, anxious folks preparing for a journey (theirs or someone else’s).                                 Wagon wheels demand precision, while the dead absolve a coffin’s hasty corner. Hacksaw, rasp, and […]

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