Literary Yard

Search for meaning

Fiction

aerial view of two men walking by a modern fountain in city

Before the Renaissance

By Drew Bufalini When cousins Paul and Jerry were young, daring, and impressionable, they made a good name for themselves in their bad Detroit neighborhood. They were smart types who went through phases of intense interest in a particular subject,…

gray scale photography of clock near trees

A New Way to Tell Time  

By: Connie Woodring March 25,1945. That is the day we received a new patient on our ward. Her name is Buella Whitehouse. I wasn’t sure if she would be accepted by everyone (patients and staff), since she is a Negro….

back view of a woman holding a candelabrum

Bad Actress

By: Elaine Lennon “Action.” I dreamed I killed my co-star last night. You could say it was a long time coming. You see, twenty years ago, when I was a mere starlet, she took the screen role that had been…

brown field and blue sky

Meteorologist

By: Eolas Pellor There was one cloud in the sky. Thin and wispy, it hurried south high overhead, borne on dry winds no one below could feel. Old lore, half forgotten, said such clouds foretold a weather change, so Gus…

woman wearing white green and red floral cap sleeved dress reading a book on black roof near green trees

red camellia

By: Cariou Beijing, China.May 16, 1966. Sunny. After school in the afternoon, our teachers asked students to sign up to join the Red Guards[i] while class cadres were compelled to join. At the age of thirteen, I didn’t understand what…

shallow focus photo of strawberries on gray wooden surface

I Remember Strawberries

By: Carl “Papa” Palmer The first thing I notice every time I come to visit is the familiar aroma of this hallway smelling as if the same lavender laundry soap is used in every assisted living facility in Tacoma. I…

woman overlooking scenic coastal view

The Bicycle

By: Clive Aaron Gill My name is Mwanza Mufulira, and I am sixteen. In Livingstone, Zambia, my parents and I live in a two-bedroom brick house with a corrugated steel roof. The city is named after David Livingstone, a Scottish…

white and black abstract painting

Tick, tick, tick

By: John Randolph One of the twin window-panes decorating the one-story house glowed with yellow light like a lizard’s eyeball. Over the pane were black shades, broken such that one diagonal blind bisected the middle third of the window. An…

silhouette of man standing

Why Bother?

By: Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue Today I’m sitting in a waiting room of another psychologist. I keep being farmed out to different ones because I’m supposedly some kind of fucked-up mess. “He saw his dad’s dead body after he shot himself,” they…

closeup photo of fire during night time

Fire!

By Russell Waterman It would be a lie to say Horace Lynch woke from a coma, even though his body told him so. But given the choice between a coma or reality, gambling on never waking up again was worth…