Sunday Stories: “Models”

"Models" image

Models
by Ian S. Maloney

In the basement of our green house in Marine Park, an industrial green carpet was laid with beige and black patterned lines. A fisherman’s net was cast from the drop ceiling and a harpoon was anchored on the wall, next to an oar slung atop two industrial hooks. Bookshelves and cubby holes were built into the wall, constructed out of pine and cedar. It looked like a honeycomb. A couch was placed before a television entertainment center. The flower printed cover of red roses and green vines was worn away. Its pillows were depressed and its springs sagged in the middle. The threadbare fabric had black grease stains on it and cigarette burn holes. Ashes accumulated in the crevices of the couch.  The nautical coffee table was strewn with glasses, bowls, cups, and magazines.

Continue Reading

Sunday Stories: “A Typical Afternoon”

"A Typical Afternoon"

A Typical Afternoon
by Tyhi Conley

A family consisting of three brothers arrived in town. Their mother gave them catholic names: Deacon, the youngest; Bishop, the middle child; and God, the oldest. It’s hard to believe the brothers were religious, but apparently their mother was. I say “was” because she died shortly before they came. 

The brothers and I would hang out often since they only moved one neighborhood over. We were on the bus ride home when Bishop told me he’d like to show me something. After school, most of our parents were still at work, leaving us a couple of hours to roam the streets. I agreed to check it out and got off at his stop. As we approached their home, I could see God talking on the phone in the parking lot. I greeted him. Deacon was in the dining room eating cereal. I greeted him too. 

Continue Reading

Sunday Stories: “Femme”

"femme" title

Femme
by Lauren Sarazen

Before I was a wife, cooking was an adventure. I took pleasure in complexity then. Bringing home French cookery books, I’d spend hours decoding instructions in my second language. Time would pass slowly, whisking egg whites into tentative submission and anxiously surveilling slow-simmering bouillabaisse. My meringue would be over beaten and chunks of white fish were outrageously overcooked, but we’d laugh and eat it anyway. 

Continue Reading

Sunday Stories: “The Tutor”

"The Tutor"

The Tutor
by Tadhg Hoey

The Tutor receives a text from his supervisor before walking into Student B’s apartment building in the West Village. Student B is having a bad day. Student B answers the door, rolls his eyes, and without saying anything, disappears down the marbled hallway into the bathroom. Unpacking his bag by the living-room window, which looks out over Sixth Avenue, The Tutor notices a bottleneck of pedestrian traffic as people slow down and try to navigate around a homeless man who is lying face down on the sidewalk. In the bathroom, Student B is playing trap music on his phone.

Continue Reading

Sunday Stories: “Bear of a Kid”

"Bear of a Kid"

Bear of a Kid
by Joseph Edwin Haeger

“Of course we’ll think it’s cute,” he said, taking a long sip of his lite beer. The suds washed down a piece of steak.

“She.”

“What?” He took another bite of steak, then took another swig a beer, letting the two sit in his mouth. 

“You said ‘it.’ It is a she. You’d better get used to that quick. She’s going to be here any day.”

He swallowed the mixture in his mouth and breathed in. A smile spread across his face.

Continue Reading

Sunday Stories: “Crisis of Uselessness”

A tent

Crisis of Uselessness
by Sean Thor Conroe

Big cuz E hit me with the gig deets. 

Four days to a week at a farm just outside of Bennington, way up in VT. 

Probably shouldn’t have signed on, how fucked I felt. 

How things didn’t look like they were getting any better.  

Cysts popping up on palms and soles, didn’t know why.  

Continue Reading

Sunday Stories: “Men In the Moon”

Moon

Men In the Moon
by Mary B. Sellers

Angry velvet air and a curved comb of a moon—its mannish features tonight are fine-toothed and ashy, like the fresh outline of an elbow bruise. Ever since I was little people have told me he’s smiling up there—a not-quite-father-figure, presumably kind and probably old—but I can’t help wondering about his penis size or whether moon entities are even allowed those. I’ve never quite believed them, though. To me, he’s only a watchful stranger, vague as a ghost, constant as a headache. Just another man playing god for twelve hour shifts, like he owns the place, like he has some right to it. If the stars were a diner, he’d be their owner. 

Continue Reading

Sunday Stories: “The Sunburned Cowboy”

Cowboy

The Sunburned Cowboy
by David Byron Queen

When I met the cowboy on the bus to Palm Desert, I had a few months sober still and life was open and full of possibility. This was 1995. Everything I owned was in a suitcase in the compartment above me—toothbrush, socks, underwear, jeans, t-shirts, a box of nicotine patches, my father’s meditation tape, a tambourine, and a 1971 Selmer Mark IV saxophone that had once belonged to my father in a plastic music case. I looked good. I’d shaved my beard, gotten myself a haircut, and wore a neat dark suit my father had given me around the time he left, told me to wear it one day at the start of my career. And well, it had taken longer than some but there I was.

Continue Reading