By: David Sapp Patty, Patty, Patty. When I was seven, all I could think of was Patty. Kissing Patty McCalla. Patty was the tiniest girl in our class, an itty-bitty version of Mary Tyler Moore. Dark hair, impish eyes, the…

By: David Sapp After a four-hour layover in the Buffalo bus terminal, after crossing the Peace Bridge in the middle of the night and disembarking again, an honest and earnest young man, I naively informed the customs officer I would…

By: Mike Nolan I’m standing looking out the window, thoughts far away, when my phone rings. My mother. I know it will frustrate her, but I don’t answer. Whatever her reason for calling, somewhere in the conversation she’ll ask if…

By: Stanka Bajlozova-Barlamova      She often saw the deformed open mouths of her patients in her dreams. The most distorted faces, she remembered of patients whose medical instructions were a diagnosis: extraction. Of all possible dental activities and interventions, tooth…

By: C. J. Anderson-Wu The first time I encountered my daughter was when she was excavating the earth burying me. My daughter was born after my death sixty years ago, which means she was sixty years old, almost double my…

By: Elaine Lennon The radio crackled into life. It shocked the desert air out of its silence. There was another man on the moon.   Gene Cernan was exploring the Taurus-Littrow Valley on the lunar surface and his words echoed crystal…

By Bruce Levine Spring was officially the season. The Spring Equinox had taken place on March twentieth, and it was now close to the end of April. But for Gary Sounding spring was never truly spring until he’d seen robins…

By: Osugiri-Iro Ezichi Franklyn It would be the night of an afo, the second one after the seventh new moon when the women came and Obiageli put the blunt razor to your hair, shaving carelessly until you scalp and it…

By Anna Cates A faint mist, reeking of swamp rot, hovered above the boreal gulag.  The remainder of charred trees rose from the muck like middle fingers raised in defiance to a long-forgotten god.  Ten thousand years would pass before…

By: Christopher Johnson Travis Monroe settled into the coach seat, which felt unutterably soft and plush and luxurious. He waved to his parents standing on the platform immediately outside the window of the train, and they waved back. His mother…