The Big TV and the Little TV
by Sylvia Math
I never read my dad’s comic books. I was not interested. Not even later, as a teenager. My brother shared his interest though, and together they amassed a huge collection. There were comic books everywhere in our house. So I knew a few basic things by osmosis. And one story in particular.
like me
by Andrea McCullough
When my daughter Alice was two, and my husband had been gone for about eight months, I went to work at a new school. I couldn’t return to Hillside Elementary after he died. I couldn’t face the kids and the families, and my colleagues. They looked at me full of pity and tilted their heads to the side. I needed a fresh start where no one knew of my loss and grief—a place where I could pretend.
Where Were You When Mick Foley Fell from 10,000 Feet?
by J.B. Stone
…I know I was in the Civic Arena here in Pittsburgh, front row & live at King of the Ring 1998, and young enough to confuse 10,000 feet with 16. Mick Foley’s body might as well have fallen from the stars that night. I watched as Mankind and The Undertaker grated each other’s bodies, shredding skin like blocs of Swiss and at one point turned this tarpaulin-covered canvas into a coffin bed of thumbtacks.
Two Excerpt from ‘Aquarium: A Novel’
by K Hank Jost
– 1 –
Hil squinted against the morning’s light. Long night. Fun night. Eventful enough to fill eons. Valleys of forgetfulness, time travel, and glimmering peaks of clarity. Nice to see Bear so happy. In their element.
A weak smile against the vise-grip around her head. Fuzzy recollections of the night’s shenanigans. Didn’t mean to make that Oliver guy cry, if that’s what he’d been doing. A sweaty affair so maybe, but those teeth gritting behind the beard. Hil knows well enough what a man trying to hold it all back looks like. Every one of them she’s ever known, from father to the pathetic cavalcade which paid her rent her first four years in the City, breaks at some point. None of them’ve ever managed it with any grace. Briefs, shirtsleeves, suits, tees, and ties, she’s seen each the one bunched up to hide face and muffle shouts. Backed away from them all before things were thrown and blows leveled. As easy as it is to foretell the shattering of their pride, it’s opposingly difficult to predict what comes next.
The Ritual
by James Jacob Hatfield
Joselyn has encouraged me to begin developing my own rituals. Things I do to calm down. Per the new installment of the Freedom of Medical Care Act (FMCA 7.3) “rituals” fall under the category of preventative medicine.
Now everytime I brush my teeth I time travel.
Poppies
by Rachel Calnek-Sugin
Once upon a time I had an aunt who was a witch. She lived in a white wooden house with a rickety wicker porch surrounded by fields of poppies. There wasn’t a square foot of her three or four acres in rural Northern Louisiana that wasn’t bursting with them. From late March until early May, there must have been thousands of flowers that dotted the landscape like flecks of paint or dribbles of blood with petals that all seemed to unfurl on the same day in an astonishing explosion of red.
Transcription
by Regan Mies
My mother told me over the phone that my brother had become “selectively deaf.” He could still hear. He enjoyed instrumental music. He often took nature walks in the arboretum along the shore. When we were kids, he could identify birds by their calls.
“He doesn’t want to listen to you?”
My mother scoffed. Her shopping cart clattered. The sound muffled as she swapped her phone from one ear to the other. “You know your brother. It’s his new thing.”
The Immanent Will
by Larry Smith
Aunt Susie could be implacable in ways that were good and useful. Two salient instances of this still loom in my consciousness, both instances during great difficult transitions for me. The first was when Bill and I split up. Now, Bill wasn’t a bad guy, I never thought he was, not even during our worst adversities. He was often sweet and his instincts about people and the world were typically humane. But he had this irrational streak. He would get something into his head and would not relent, no matter how unreasonable or indefensible he must have realized it was. I’m thinking of when Aunt Susie came to my rescue in a dispute with Bill involving a CD. Any divorce lawyer would have agreed that I was entitled to half of it. Bill insisted the whole thing belonged to him, always had and always would. It was more stubbornness than greed on his part. He wouldn’t listen to reason and averred he’d ignore any court order requiring him to pay. Didn’t make sense, and I was distraught because I needed the money then and there, not after some protracted adjudication and subsequent garnisheeing of his paycheck or whatever remedy was applicable.