Fiction - Year VII - Number 51 - November 2021

Screaming into the Well As jones steered his way through the palm fronds of a few ideas that wanted to surface but kept diving back down again into the undertow of his brain, appearing just...

The elevator door opened. It was thoroughly unremarkable, as many apartment elevators would be. A red pleather jacket over a gray hoodie entered, eyes glued to his phone. “Can you push two for me?” he...

OUR FATHER Our Father… It’s time to ring the church bells. I’m waiting for my turn and I’m starting to get nervous. I’ve been coming up with excuses not to climb up the tower. It’s gloomy,...

I met myself the day before the Fourth of July. I was sitting in a nondescript coffee shop in my hometown, they’d torn down the deli I used to go to with my father...

Luzia’s Dowry The plane bringing me from Copenhagen to Lisbon was half-empty. So was the ‘Arrivals’ at the Lisbon-International on that late warm October evening when I came across her  ̶  my inamorata-siren  ̶  for...

     As one year ends and another begins, one invariably, inevitably waxes nostalgic, particularly with regard to those he has lost, they being the most important people to him.  My parents, Emory and Doris...

Don’t get me wrong. I love humans (most of the time), and I know they’re often (not always) intelligent. However, they have a blind spot when it comes to other animals. I say “other”...

They had been out for longer than made sense, and it had been far too long since they’d seen anyone else. This wasn’t remote wilderness they were hiking through––a twenty-minute drive from town to...

The Gift of the Rain God Maybe a god of the rain forest slumbers on a mountain ledge high above the valley and the lake, his ample stomach rising and falling, with his ethereal entourage,...

He is a parrot, our neighbour's bird.  But don't ever call him one.  He becomes touchy and  will reply emphatically from inside his cage that he is an African Grey.  I took note of...