WENDA by John Kaufmann
WENDAby John Kaufmann
About two-and-a-half or three years after I bought my first park, I got a call from a woman who I will call Wenda. Wenda was maybe sixty years old. She had grown...
DAILY BREAD by Stan Dryer
DAILY BREADby Stan Dryer
On a January morning over a year ago I came into my Clinic an hour before opening time, in hopes of getting through some paperwork before my first client arrived. The...
FALLING UP by Sandra Gould Ford
WOLF BENEATH THE WAVESBy Sandra Gould Ford
The brick-red Jeep Wrangler cruised beside the icy river, kicking up great sprays of snow. The driver, Peyton Granville, said, “Guess we missed the salt trucks.” Peyton was...
HONY by Monika R. Martyn
HONYby Monika R. Martyn
No matter how often I’ve tried to pinpoint it, it is never a single, definable trigger that unhooks the memory. Sometimes it’s the strum of a guitar, something vintage, or the...
A PLACE TO BE by David Metz
A PLACE TO BEby David C. Metz
His brother’s grave was in the northwest corner of the cemetery and after they’d finished loading the equipment, Randy paid his respects. That’s how he described it to...
THE PLATE by Susie Gharib
THE PLATEby Susie Gharib
She had brought nothing with her to that shabby shrine, meant to heal but only aggravating her ill feeling. They had commercialized death itself. She thought of florists, candle shops and...
EULOGY by James P. Johnson
EULOGYby James P. Johnson
Being his best friend in school, his family had asked me to deliver Peg-leg Pete’s --- Edward Kowalski’s --- eulogy.We’d first met in Kindergarten in 1952. He would’ve entered school when...
RELIEF by Edward Lee
RELIEFBy Edward Lee
She is unable to think of a different word to describe how she feels, a more sympathetic word, one that doesn’t sound so unkind, mercenary. So, solely to herself, silently, almost like...
THE FACE OF NEED by Joe Ponepinto
THE FACE OF NEEDby Joe Ponepinto
At the charity dinner, the city’s wealth was like a fragrance, subtle and sweet. As she breathed it in she began to have a vision of an altered future....
THE FASTEST GUN ON 441 by R. W. Haynes
THE FASTEST GUN ON 441By R.W. Haynes
OK, here’s the story.The setting is a semi-rural 7-11 type store. There’s a kind of lean and hungry lookin, raggedy, kind of dirty character, walking through the parkin'...