Mid-Year
by Hope Kokot
You and I live above one of those places where you can get a great big plate of chicken and rice and beans and cheese for five dollars, and they recognize us; when I go alone it’s Where is your boyfriend? The apartment is a fourth-floor walkup, which I hate; it sometimes smells like pastellitos, which I love. I like to cook for you.
Steve in the Trees
by Joseph Linscott
Strolling in the evening, that’s what we called it. Strolling: casual, old timey, it made us feel like we were ready to smoke unfiltereds, before we saw what they did to our uncles and grandfathers—wore their teeth away to nothing but pitty little nubbins in the mouth. Evening: sophisticated, elegant, it made us feel like we hadn’t gone through what everyone else wanted us to call trauma, it was just a little fun that gave us a different flavor from everyone else.
An Imposition
by Claire Oleson
Shane was up to his thighs in the pond, moving pressure between his only two feet, thinking about his older brother, who had obliterated his femur to fine bone-snow just a month back. Skiing. Shane was lucky to have two working legs that were so pretty and so easy to use. He shifted his weight and basked in his luckiness. Weird to feel like this: to feel like what happens to your older brother is something that will happen to you eventually, that his whole body is a trailer for yours. This was not true, but Shane could not shake the gratefulness out of his legs. He wasn’t his brother. Shane was careful, borderline neurotic, thigh-deep in pond water, and not a skier. He was not whole because of luck; it was practical. Still: his legs looked good with his navy-blue running shorts hiked until they caught on his thighs and stayed there: bitch, lucky.
Atisole / O, Dawn
by Adolfo Alzuphar
He is a painter of beauty. He is an expert at friendship. At his table, he promised to tell me a story that would be a transcription of reality, that I’d lost my way.
Keep Ticking
by Alan Gartenhaus
A sore back didn’t stop Yelena from smiling as she wrapped Mr. Phillips’ arms around her neck and lifted him from the bed. Though he had lost weight, the dampened sheet made sliding him to the edge difficult, and the plastic mattress protector resisted, adding its complaint. She lowered him onto the shower chair and wheeled him into the stall. She’d run the hot water to warm the bathroom and had towels at the ready as he was easily chilled. Yelena had long overcome any shyness while bathing residents. She knew massaging their fragile bodies with soap and water soothed them.
They Got Away
by Sara Schaff
The couple had come to see the used car. Donna was showing the car because her brother, who owned the car, could not be there to show it. He was in a nursing home, and she was the one to put him there.
from Freelance
by Kevin M. Kearney
Simon waited out the next morning’s pre-lunch lull in the Italian Market, observing the vendors along 9th Street hocking food, fish, and unlicensed Eagles merch. John the Bag Man waltzed by the Subaru and waved, showing off his blistered palms. A Vietnamese family inspected the produce stands’ vegetables, disappointed to find that nearly all of them were already spoiled. Blood-stained butchers from Cannuli’s and Esposito’s loitered on their respective corners, smoking cigarettes and talking shit on the mayor.
Punk
by Francis Levy
I started drinking Beefeaters, by myself, grabbing the bottle from the burnished wood foldup bar in the den. My face was hot from the gin which I swigged down as fast as I could, taking one last swallow right from the bottle.