Prose and Poetry at the University of Chicago
Recidivists! And I’m one of them— Killer-diller in my two-tone stompers. Hi-de-ho! We’re cooking with gas. It was a smoggy morning in August, already 120 degrees. In the quad below office workers were taking their 8:45 break. Hanley adjusted the binocular feature on his eyeglasses, which magnified the leaves of a live oak and revealed […]
Read More Fiction: “Hanley’s Suggestion” by Todd Easton Mills“Papa!” Nina saw the old man first, just a second before Ollie, standing at the edge of the woods on the far side of the pond. He waved to them, and then beckoned, but they did not move. And then he was there, and then he was gone. The […]
Read More Fiction: “The Nokken” by Sean McCarthyIn the bedroom of a small apartment outside Kielce in Poland, a man named Gustaw Smolak had a heart attack just as his wife left to get groceries in their olive green Camaro. The Smolak family lived on the second floor of a building that had been redecorated so many times by its tenants over […]
Read More Fiction: “Good Taste” by Dana SchwartzGam never cuddled or cooed. She didn’t linger or inquire or speak of love. She had suffered the loss of her husband over two decades ago and, though they hadn’t laughed often, when they did, it was deep and hearty. Gam smothered bread with butter and piled ham high between the white, buttery slices, serving […]
Read More Fiction: “Into the Horizon” by Kacy CunninghamYou can do it in a bathroom, curtains drawn, lights out. Any room where there’s a mirror. Some recommend the use of candles, but the best results can only be achieved in total darkness. Make sure the glass is clean. You don’t want to mistake dust or scratches for anything more than what they are. […]
Read More From the Archives: “Mirror” by Robin KishIt is no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I understand and see it the same way. The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from […]
Read More Fiction: “Cyberian Gulag Archipelago” by George DjuricMy friend Kate makes fun of me because when we go to the grocery store together, which is often (since she has a car and I don’t), I’m always smelling things. I smell the marshmallows through the bag. I smell the circus peanuts and the maple nut goodies and the Necco wafers in the candy […]
Read More From the Archives: “Mixed Blessings” by Stephen David Glover“I had a dream I was sitting in a car in a mini mall and my tooth fell out. Unusual for me, right? As a city gal to be in a car, much less a mini mall? I was holding the tooth cupped in my hand in my lap. Then somehow I spotted a dental […]
Read More Fiction: “No Man’s Land” by Nancy Ford DuganApril awoke to the hemming and hawing of an electric tooth brush whose battery was running low. The sound reminded her of the spinning top her daddy had given her for her third birthday, a top with airplanes which took off and landed as it jiggled along the pitted linoleum floor of their double wide. It had been […]
Read More Fiction: “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” by S. Frederic Liss1 She must have dropped it coming out: one of a pair of black satin gloves. She remembers holding them as she rose and clapped gingerly, glimpsing Dan’s frown, his glassy green eyes fixed in front of him, and thought crossly, he looks the perfect spectator—though what she’d meant she couldn’t quite say. Outside the […]
Read More Fiction: One Glove by Stephen Delaney