David Niose | November 3, 2008
The esteemed professor, an expert on interstellar civilizations, is giving a public lecture about the area of her specialization. For years she has been studying the distant planet of Lipar, where intelligent life once existed but has been long extinct. Tonight she discusses some of her findings:
Good evening. Almost half a billion years ago (435 [...]
Jan Steckel | February 22, 2008
The Ox folds his wings and in no known language admonishes Our Lord to behave like a role model. The universe resounds with Heavenly annoyance. The Eagle and the Lion are unperturbed. Intervention is out of the question. The Almighty can hardly expect men to act as though they were responsible [...]
Anna Tuttle Villegas | January 25, 2008
With his electric screwdriver, my big brother Lyle is tightening the hinges on the saggy composite doors beneath the sink in the kitchen of the minimalist apartment I rent from Barbi. One of Lyle’s cast-off high school love interests, my landlord harbors few ill feelings toward the person Lyle was twenty years ago. [...]
Dennis Earl Fehr | November 30, 2007
Prologue to the novel Girl Willow
A note from the author:
God’s Servant Guthrie Bodkin is excerpted from a novel titled “Girl Willow.” Guthrie and his sister Willow grow up in a secluded fundamentalist community. Willow watches helplessly over the years as her brother is subjected to increasingly violent, Biblically justified abuse from their mentally [...]
Michael W. Jones | September 19, 2007
Mo didn’t think that it was a foxhole, really, but more of a shallow depression left when a recent mortar misfire had landed in the soft, moist, often-tilled black earth of this poor farmer’s field. The ground itself was dismally flat, even this close to the river, as was most of the land in this [...]
Mike Hood | September 17, 2007
Eight years had passed since Voltaire abandoned Candide, his wife, the once-lovely Miss Cunégonde, and their companions on a small farm not too distant from Constantinople to “cultivate the garden.” Miss Cunégonde had grown less attractive in countenance and temperament, and Dr. Pangloss, as hard as he tried, could not free himself of the philosophical [...]
Dennis Earl Fehr | September 13, 2007
1
It started just how they said on Oprah. You were always sorry after. And I always came back.
2
You called me a bum fuck because we weren’t conceiving. You told Denise and Lisa it was my fault, so I got checked. The doctor said my plumbing was fine. I knew you would be afraid [...]
Michael W. Jones | August 28, 2007
When Brian was young, he had looked at the moon as a magical place. Now, he saw the cool serenity of the lunar surface and the efforts that it had taken mankind to reach its surface. Although not even an amateur astronomer, Brian had always enjoyed the night sky. It had been a place of [...]
