Fish In a Basket by Terri Chastain
We try to sleep. We toss like fish in a basket, our bodies making tiny leaps over the rosebud sheets — not our sheets. Our sheets are gray from too many washings and not enough hot water, not enough bleach...Another Hole in the Head by J. Sallini-Genovese
I came to escort the victim because I am observant. One night while escaping a cheap hotel room in Chicago, I went in search of a restaurant, and noticed a man walking in a sort of dazed fashion. When he stepped into the streetlight I could see blood dripping down the side of his head, steam rising from the wound...ABVD PGA Champ by William Bradley
The saline flush is slowly dripping through the plastic tube and into my veins. Pam, the head nurse, has just finished administering the last drug in my ABVD chemotherapy treatment, the DTIC-Dome. The drugs have left me feeling weary, with a heavy head and outraged, tumultuous stomach...Learning Womanhood by Kimberly Ann Srock
Father and I sit side-by-side, upper bodies parallel, with our elbows resting on the black and white marbled countertop as we watch our women perform the evening ritual of cleaning up after dinner. I am young enough to remain observer, but old enough to realize I will soon join in this dance with a thin white dishtowel of my own hanging from my forearm...Love and Hate by Dave Migman
Mario returned with a new tattoo, a scorpion squatting the round of his hand, one pincer along the thumb, the other along his index finger. Snip, snip, snip he said. I always knew that guy would be trouble. His return that night was cause for celebration and the Poles gathered around us laden with bottles of "Vodka Polish" and the evil "spiritos".Late Snow by Lynn Edge
I recall the epigraph to Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, "One generation passeth away." (Ecclesiastes)Stiffening knees and back whisper my own transitory time. Yet I yearn to see Sierra Blanca covered with snow. For weeks, months, years, I talk, plan, then cancel...
Harmonicas by Sara Cohen
I don't expect you to be an expert on harmonicas or anything. I'm not an expert. Don't let the title fool you — this story isn't reallly about harmonicas. But I'm hoping that maybe you've seen one before or maybe even held one in your hands. If you've held one before, you surely got the urge to lift it up to your lips and blow on it to see what kind of noise it would make...Taking Flight by Laurie Seidler
The gypsy moths were bad the year Dad caught fire. That summer, I slipped into a feverish adolescence stone cold broke and swathed in the silken threads of parasitic caterpillars. Under such conditions was my first and only cabaret act conceived, executed and, fortunately for all involved, immediately dissolved...