Gary Lutz
THIS IS NOT A BILL I was either a bad reflection on my parents or their one true likeness. But my own kids? You promise them anything their little hearts desire, but how little their hearts always are,...
View ArticleSean Lovelace
The Modern Man The Modern Man came off the mountain and started tussling. He tussled the local farmers, then the villagers, then the vagabonds. He tussled the whitetail deer and the windmills and the...
View ArticleSherrie Flick
Secrets This is the way it happened: Robbie jumped out of the hayloft and hit his head. Or, he was pushed out of the hayloft and hit his head. Or, he was goaded out and then hit his head. Or, he fell...
View ArticleTom Hazuka
Dive I’m back by the pool table in Shank’s, a dive on the wrong side of downtown, trying not to yawn or stare at the chest of a girl in a tight T-shirt babbling about her ex-boyfriend. Suddenly glass...
View ArticleNatalia Rachel Singer
Vladimir and Estragon He thought we were only company men, loyal but a little dim-witted, the kind of guys who pass the time making simple observations like “Look, a tree,” and “Yeah, that fat guy is...
View ArticleCooper Renner
Vapid Sure, it looked like there were grapes in his jeans. No doubt. This was his fantasy: she’d come and peel him out of his shell, not even say please. Who says please anyway? He wants to rant, he...
View ArticleMatthew Fogarty
In the Shape of That day it was cloudy and there was a grinding noise of gears coming off the clouds muscling into and out of each other, gears like on a car or a freight train but like they’d been...
View ArticleLeonard Kress
Fifty Bucks Leftover My husband buys me earrings and hands them to me. I take the box, pry open the lid. I go through the whole ordeal—remove my old hoops and my other studs, push the new ones...
View ArticleRobert Scotellaro
Fun House She’d gotten the fun house mirrors at an auction and had them put up in the spare bedroom. He found them strange, even a little disturbing, and thought the buy extravagant with the kids away...
View ArticleChuck Rosenthal
Sparrow, Crow Diosa met Ruth Sparrow in a poetry writing workshop that Sparrow offered while visiting UVA in Charlottesville, Virginia. Sparrow invited her to flee to Vermont and take a vacation from...
View Article