by John Paul Carillo | Nov 17, 2022 | Fiction
A little over two years after he’d enlisted, Allen was back from Iraq and back with Lawn Island Landscaping. If I’d been scared of Allen before, I was terrified of him now. It wasn’t what Allen did that was frightening; it was more what he didn’t do. The first week he...
by David Soyka | Sep 2, 2022 | Fiction
I once taught a course called Literature of War at a small community college shortly before the first Iraq war. One assignment I gave was to interview someone who had been in a war about their experiences. For most of my students that would have been a father or...
by Ash Kaul | Jun 17, 2022 | Fiction
Editor’s Note: This story is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress. In the dark of the hall, Faraaz watches his brothers Manzoor and Adil alternately going to the toilet. It’s okay. They’ll tell when they’re ready. You can’t expect fifteen- and thirteen-year-old boys to...
by Janice Kidd | Apr 8, 2022 | Fiction
The night before sailing for America with Comte de Rochambeau’s naval fleet, Antoine Cocq cracked one kneepan while pleading to convince Marie Barbe to marry him. The force of his kneel didn’t split the bone, though he had with passion dropped to her skirt hem. He...
by William Price | Oct 31, 2021 | Fiction
“Ok, you’re gonna feel a little pinch.” What I feel is not a little pinch. A white-hot spear of memory and consequence slowly twists its way into the small of my back. A serpent, coiled around my spine, thrashes against the violation hissing it memory-filled outrage....
by J. T. Townley | Oct 10, 2021 | Fiction
How it happen like this. Listen: Melissa Jim say Rayburn can carry flag. The good flag? say Rayburn. Melissa Jim laugh. Same for Bubba and Jon-Jon. Even Grandpa snicker. Rayburn grit teeth and squeeze handle of pistol-gun in waistband. What you gonna do with that...
by Alexis Stratton | Sep 30, 2021 | Fiction
It’s like the face of her had changed—like she’s someone else, someone you used to know but can’t quite put your finger on. She greets you warmly, that same smile, her hair whitened by the years, makeup covering the lines that crisscross her skin. She’s visiting her...
by Mark Basquill | Aug 2, 2021 | Fiction
Smiling like his patron saint Sisyphus, Squirrel guided the purple Mustang from the amber glow of sunset at Santa Monica Pier to a ridge in the San Gabriel mountains. Into the darkness. Always uphill. Squirrel had been there and done that. Shrapnel biting his...
by Dan A. Cardoza | Mar 31, 2021 | Fiction
Once again, I’m here at a hardware store, oddly inspecting at-attention shovels standing their platoon. Each shovel is in their designated cubbies and holes, one next to the other, like vertical coffins. Some appear homespun in length and with hickory handles, built...
by Cynthia Boorujy | Nov 4, 2020 | Fiction
Armenian professors massacred by the Turks. From: Amēnun taretsʻuytsʻě : zbōsali u pitani. (1921) We made our way across the culvert. The few of us left who remembered digging it exchanged glances. The waters now flowed and tadpoles teemed in the ripples. We were...
