Two Poems by Meg Pokrass

Grass Fed Did you float home into the sun after the cooling from her bright words, grass-fed steak, sex slippery as ripples reflecting off her soft-seeing, sensible face? I imagine you still feel bruised, in that way that one can’t smile all the way up, the cheeks want to, but the chin rebels… half the […]

Talking with Furniture: Kyle Minor

(Photo © Miriam Berkley) Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil’s Territory, a collection of short fiction, and co-editor of The Other Chekhov. His recent work appears in The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Plots with Guns, and in anthologies such as Best American Mystery Stories 2008 , Surreal South  and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. Random House named Kyle one of the “Best […]

Three Poems by Cassie Mannes

Flood Season                                                                                  This is before electricity. The calm, cool end-of-summer winds waft through screened windows of […]

Review: Ghostwritten

The Reviewed: Ghostwritten by David Mitchell The Reviewer: Corey Eastwood  *** “London is a language. I guess all places are,” writes David Mitchell in his 1999 debut, Ghostwritten. By his own definition Mitchell attempts to speak nine languages throughout the course of this imaginative, wide-reaching book.  Called a “novel in nine parts,” Ghostwritten employs a […]

“Berthier Door” by Mark Reep

Say there’s a Berthier door somewhere. If you don’t know, look it up. What they won’t tell you’s this one’s monitored by a tiny surveillance camera mounted in a streetlamp, tapping city power. Door of course impeccably constructed textured with hundreds of years of city grime flawlessly integrated into context. So much so that three […]

“Kimmy Johnson, Six Year-Old Comedian, Performs Stand-Up Written For Her By Her Manager” by Katie Eisenberg

What’s up, Los Angeles! Okay, before I start, I just wanted to tell you that you don’t have to worry about hurting my feelings if you don’t want to clap for me. My parents will just hold you responsible for wounding my fragile psyche, and then they’ll hit you with my therapy bills when I […]

“The One-Step Program” by Meg Tuite’s Exquisite Quartet

This is the latest in Meg Tuite’s Exquisite Quartet. To go to the column page, please click here. Forest deflated when they dumped him out of the minivan in front of this subterranean booby hatch. Parents were supposed to be worried, concerned, full of remorse for someone they may have exploited as a child. They […]

Two Stories by Adam Reger

Small-Town Man Troubled by Persistent Dream He began to dream about jumping off the tops of tall buildings. After a running start, a leap, and momentum lasting half a second. The dream would end just after the shudder of beginning to fall. That was enough to wake him, and to haunt him by day. He […]

Three Poems by Parker Tettleton

This Is Just How Was Is You are walking. You & things like others are. Like we. Like us. Then we stops to admire a mannequin in the window of a condemned building. We asks why, why are we here & this & is there ever enough toast? Us unties laces, lays down before the […]

“If You Weren’t Here” by Erin Fitzgerald

Kevin hangs his baseball caps where he can see them. Last year, someone stole his cap from the coat claim shelf at his company’s Christmas party. It was a custom fit Earnhardt #3 pit crew cap, a present from Audrey. The authenticity certificate is still in a box of old birthday and Christmas cards. When Kevin opens the box, […]