by C.C. Russell
Jacky says the perfect country song has to be about a truck and someone who’s gotten hurt. It has to have at least one line about beer and talk about the current lives of old high-school friends. “A real country song has to be sad,” …
by Michelle McMillan-Holifield
It was the year you woke up in ICU with all fifteen of us (against hospital protocol, but then everyone thought you were dying) staring at you and tubes wormed their way down your throat, and you sat up, lay back down, sat up again, waving arms, miming for a pen and when there was none, your fingers danced (Mozart? Picasso?) along the sheet that lay over your atrophied legs, writing questions in invisible ink.
by Ari Rubin
What has cold blood, but warm breath?
A dragon. Oh, don’t flatter yourself. I wanted you to get that one.
by Katie Sisneros
The first time you brought me the moon, I demanded you put it right back where you got it. “People need that, you know!” I said, scooting you out the door while you cradled the moon gingerly in your arms. I pointed up at the …
by Mark Crimmins
Jim Walsh says he has all this stuff to do in town and do I want to go with him, so I tag along. We go to the bank. The post office. Taco Time. After we’ve eaten our burritos he says he needs to stop …
by Sara Dobie Bauer
“I’m the traveler. Right here.” I waved my hand, but he didn’t acknowledge. I suppose that was when I started to suspect I was dead, at the train station. People had been ignoring me all day, from the taxi driver on Fifth, to the coffee …
by Rob Tyler
Bullet-Headed Man A bullet-headed man in a leather vest with swirling black tattoos on his shoulders walks up to the shooting gallery off the midway and asks the gap-toothed barker, you remember me? I was here yesterday with my girl. This fucking game is rigged. …
by Rob Tyler
Pronghorn As a kid, I was a hell-raiser. I don’t know why; I just was. My folks didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t have any friends. I flunked out of school. Girls wouldn’t come near me. The only thing I could do …
by Mark Crimmins
People keep telling you you look exactly like this other person. You realize you must be pretty similar when strangers start walking up to you and continuing conversations you've never had. I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day.
by Kirby Wright
She gives me the look, the same one she throws whenever we brush our teeth together late at night at the double sinks. It’s somewhere between tolerance and abject disgust. Disgust because I not only eat meat but wolf it down rare. “Face eater,” she …