By: Pat Spencer Generally, I find public transportation to be hours of isolation, interrupted by a neighborly comment or two. So, when I boarded a repurposed school bus for the bone-jarring ride from Johannesburg to Zimbabwe, the last thing I…
By Tyler Marable For Joseph Harmon there was not a more exhilarating experience than lying with a young woman—especially one who wasn’t his wife. Lexi laid sleep by his side. Her pink hair ran down her bare shoulders and…
By Munavvar Tlewbaeva It was autumn. A Friday. The cold crept slowly into my bones as the sun began to set. I had just finished my English course and was heading from the city back to my village — back…
By: Don Tassone He’d lived in his house for 20 years and planted every tree in his yard. His favorite was an American cherry. He had planted it as a sapling. Now it was big, strong and stately. It…
By: Philip Graubart Rabbi Judith Adler wrapped her damp palm around the gun barrel. She was surprised at how easily the pistol fit in her hand, somehow accommodating her exact lines and fissures, as if the deadly thing had been…
By: Eugen Oniscu From the stopped train, people of all kinds stepped down, scattering along the streets that stretched beside the station. Among the last to descend was a man moving with the aid of two crutches. He seemed utterly…
By Douglas Young Douglas Young is an author and professor emeritus whose essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications in America, Canada, Europe, and Asia. His first novel, Deep in the Forest, was published in 2021 and…
By: Don Tassone Andrea sat propped up in her bed, looked around her room and wondered where she was. Nothing looked familiar. She felt lost. But then her eyes lit up. “I see it!” she cried. “What’s…
By: William Kitcher And then I saw myself in the future. I looked ninety or a hundred or eighty, who can tell? Once you’re past a certain age, you’re old, and that never changes. One son visited me every Father’s…
By: Harvey Huddleston His mother let him smoke. How could she not? We’d go out to the backyard and share a cig. Like kids again. It was also the exercise, walking down the hall and through the living room and…