Fiction: “Written on the Wall in Chalk” by Lee Oleson

A story of our post-9/11 Great Depression. This piece is an eery and all-too-telling portrait of today’s Americana. —The Editors The laundry, off a side street, has a small sign over the front door that says Capeti & Brothers. It’s a large, two-story building with no windows. From inside comes the roar of machines.

Fiction: Bedtime Story by Robin Oliveira

In my half-sleep, I hear the tattling sounds of a key unlocking the front door, a tipsy stumble up the stairs, the soft hush of the bathroom door closing, and then the adolescent tell of muffled retching. I surface slowly from unconsciousness, exasperated but relieved that whatever escapade my daughter Caro has been up to […]

Fiction: “Prometheus” by James Henschen

“I don’t want to know what it was ‘like’, I want to know what it was.” When the detective with the crooked jaw and prom king blue eyes says this to me, I want to punch him in the throat. Apparently, he lacks an appreciation for metaphor because what I said was “it was like […]

Sneak Preview: “Breakfast at the All-Nude Revue” by Ingrid Satelmajer

Our Winter 2009 page now has a great humorous short story, one of three that’ll be appearing in our upcoming issue.

Fiction: Out of Love by Randall Brown

Lucy believes—the way she trusts gravity, getting old, being lonely—that she does not matter in this world. If she could talk to me, writing her, she could not form the words to ask for help, because she does not grasp the lie at the center of her Self. I want so much to save Lucy, but I don’t know how.