“I can grow a long bushy beard, or I can shave my head. Put eyeliner on me and see how brooding I become (I’m thinking of Mr. Jabapuppee from Ziti Underbelly). These choices are all up to you.” New fiction by Doug Cornett.
What is a cellular narrative? Benjamin Tedoff offers thirteen perfect examples.
I am normal, I think, in all regards except for the fact that I still live with my parents. I read somewhere or heard somewhere not long ago that more and more adults these days live with their parents. It is comforting to know that I, that my girlfriend and I, are not in a league of our own, so to speak.
1. The Tortoise and the Hare “All is flux,” said the tortoise, who fancied himself a philosopher. “Here I stroll one day in the brown light of February, to my destination which will have changed already when I do arrive, and the dead trees will again be green, and blossom. I will then leave, and…
“Today is the fourteenth of February. My favourite day of the year. Christmas is a good one too, and New Year’s Eve is usually reliable, but there’s nothing quite so powerful as loneliness magnified by a day of cards, flowers, and displays of affection, all partaken in by other people.” New fiction by Anton Rose.
“No matter how torturous it was in Panama, those six weeks pale in comparison to Survival School. They do things to you there to prove just how machine-like you really are. They starve you of sleep for seventy-two hours, as you chant enthusiastically: I am an American Airman, my mission is to fly, fight, and win.” New fiction by Elliott Scott.
Steve Regal pressed his palm to the copy machine glass. The heat and smell of toner comforted him. The day before, at the dentist, he’d read in a two-year-old National Geographic a feature on bullfighting in Seville. He’d been waiting for that article for thirty-two years, though he hadn’t known he’d been waiting until he’d…
Bury me in red, Langston said. Bury me in red, ‘cos there ain’t no sense in my bein’ dead. The line echoed in my head, giving me an absurd smile as I handed over the tastefully bagged blue underwear and bra that my mother would wear to her funeral. It had been more difficult than I…
Gene Schmidt on a “humorous practice” that may be nearly as old as the fortune cookie.