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Johnny by Loretta Williams

This is not a story anyone wants to hear, so I’ll give it to you slow. You let me know when you’ve heard enough. My cousin Johnny wasn’t really my cousin. He was the stepson of my aunt, my mother’s older sister who had had a bad first marriage and rather than marry again, decided … Read more

Nobody Thought It Would Rain At God’s Funeral by Mike Rosen

They were too overwhelmed by the sight of decaled media vans and fiending paparazzi rising up the hillside, one cocked elbow at a time. A man from Hong Kong, along with a woman from Denmark and a teenager from Paramus, New Jersey all watched the spectacle from their cell phones as they each spent one … Read more

the jasmine hedge is intoxicating by Gretchen Mattox

I fear being like her and I am like her the critical part that wants to hurt the other render them helpless and needy no one measuring up, everything falling short like the woman on the news who bit the nose of the pitbull that attacked her retriever (really happened) I like to break skin, … Read more

Bugs By Morgan W. Strauss

            Instead of thinking about Sonny, his traveling companion wishes she were in Spain.  How far of a drive is it from Granada to Barcelona?             Twenty miles south of Fresno a sign says Visalia 24 miles. Sonny pilots the car with dirty hands, a torn shirt, an unintentional beard, last … Read more

Absorption by Robert D. Montoya

This is the sound             of losing myself: the drips of continuous rain as it             disperses itself             along the wet ground, *** Where Costa Rican vines, like syringes, suck the water (tender roots like a child *** sucking upon a nipple, absorbing the minerals, the liquid of … Read more

Melanie L. McNair: The End of the Affair

The End of the Affair *** Community In Shock at Vicious Murder; Vigil Tonight There will be a vigil tonight beginning at 7PM at the site of the slaying of Sally Green, 111 Great Heights Place, in Echo Park. Friends and neighbors are gathering to remember Green, 35, who had only recently moved into the … Read more

From Where I Sit by Robert D. Montoya

The world is distorted: *** A tiny crack where walls meet Forms a burrow, where a spider Weeps its web onto the sinews Of my increasing thought. *** The dust on the cabinet is settled, staged with a perfect conception; With one large sweep Of breath, it is in chaos, *** It is indivisible as … Read more