By: U.S. Khokhar The Sun removes the starry, dark blanket as a caring mother. But just as a normal kid, it takes a lot more than just uncovering to break the sweet dreams. The emerging sound of the city that…

By: Ken Kapp             A long time ago in a small Carpathian village there lived two cobblers, Davut and Radut. They were cousins and had been taught their trade by an uncle who had no sons of his own. Both…

By: Duane L. Herrmann My name is Marut, the same as the god of the wind, and my family name is Jafari, which is Sanskrit and means little stream. My father said that, once upon a time, our family lived…

By: Matt Nagin All day the phone rang. Bill Cartwright owed everyone: Wells Fargo, Visa, Home Depot, even a gastroenterologist on Madison Avenue who charged exorbitant prices for the snazziest colonoscopy in town. Bill intended to pay them all back….

By: Dennis Vannatta They’re our secret desires, Freud said of dreams.  If so, why does this endless night of dreams keep bringing me to such wretched places?  Empty streets under dour gray skies in one. Heat and dust in another. …

By Ellis Shuman I remember meeting Milena the day I rode on one of Sofia’s rusty orange trams for the first time. I remember boarding, searching for somewhere to validate my ticket. The ticket was a thin piece of paper,…

By: Anthony Ward             Will painstakingly painted the same scene over and over. Like Monet’s Rouen Cathedral. Except this was no cathedral. It was the stone wall that enclosed his own back yard at the end of the lawn behind…

By Ranjit Kulkarni Why did God give the human species the intelligence to invent the mobile phone? Sitting alone in a plush restaurant in despair, young Rakesh Oswal threw his phone away. Even in the AC of the restaurant, his…

By: Jim Bates The old man sat staring out the window of his apartment. The mask mandate had been lifted and people were flocking into the city’s streets to celebrate, some even dancing. He thought about his dear wife, lost…

By Harrison Abbott I was in home economics class in high school and there was this scary, chronically angry teacher called Mrs Grierson whom we all had to respect, for some reason, despite her shouty aggressive ways. I was bad…