Prose: “Modern Love,” by James O’Meara

She wanted thumbtacked 3 x 5s on her walls, plush carpets, and plenty of space. Long nights and short days, love that could drive her crazy if she let it. Soft whispers in the half-light of morning, tangled up in the sheets of a twin-sized bed, iced coffee and an omelet, shared independence. She wore […]

Prose: “something that knows it’s dead,” by Isabel Yacura

Her body is rotting. Allison knows this, just as she knows the four chambers of the heart—two atria, two ventricles—and how to stitch a simple continuous suture. When she slices open the cadaver, y-shape, petals of flesh blooming underneath her fingers, her advisor praises her steady hands. Beneath her mask, Allison smiles. There was a […]

Prose: “Don’t Be Afraid to Forget,” by Griffin Gudaitis

While I was at Dave’s wake, all I could think about was the last time he got laid. Since graduation, he’d been on three or four dates, but none of them really went anywhere. This thought just cropped up in my mind, not that it brought me any particular joy, but seeing that it wasn’t […]

Prose: “Walter,” by Gary Kimball

The first time I saw Walter he was coming out of building across the street from my office. He looked nervous, the way he swung his head around one way and then the other as he locked the door and hurried up the sidewalk, pushing long, black strands of hair off his face and glancing […]

Prose: “Yellow Shift,” by Mary Lewis

I couldn’t believe they’d put all of us into this cramped basement room with stone walls and tiny windows too high to see out of, but maybe that was part of the therapy. A dozen people looked up from their chairs at Dr. Ward who stood on this little platform, jerking his arms like some sci-fi […]

Prose: “Interloper From Another Neighborhood” by Douglas Steward

At any one time there are scores of houses in the Grosse Pointe area that sit empty, serving time as silent citadels of the neighborhood. They’re owned by family estates whose administrators diligently pay the taxes and heating expenses year after year. They never dream of putting the property up for sale and risk having […]

PROSE: “Collect” by Richard Charles Schaefer

After 20 years, Benjamin Wheeler was just another person I didn’t talk to anymore, never mind why; when a friendship is that far in the rearview, a falling out and a quiet fizzle are both specks on the horizon. Human-interest stories don’t interest me, so I don’t know why I read the article on the “Collection […]

Prose: “An Experiment” by Hallin Burgan

Friday, 2/21: I have decided to conduct an experiment. In order to answer the gravest of questions, one requires the surest of methods. Before I begin (and before you begin to read my report) it is necessary to lay out a few “ground rules,” so to speak. An experiment requires strict parameters in order to […]

Fiction: “Good Taste” by Dana Schwartz

In 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 […]

Fiction: “Into the Horizon” by Kacy Cunningham

Gam 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 […]