Tag Archives: Creative Fiction

Watching the News

by James Hartman

I stood at the window, still watching those bare limbs on that birch tree along the slope of bright snow in the dark because I wanted to believe I saw one flutter a little red.

“Oh, Jonathan,” my father called.  “It’s there, right?  One has finally come?!”

Cardinals were my father’s favorite animal.  When they were younger he and his brother used to set bird feeders throughout their backyard, strategically placed according to what they had learned from their Audubon book.  My father always talked about them.  He always believed they meant the return of something.
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Memories

by Fabiana Martínez

If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.

Plato, Phaedrus, 274c-275 b, Reginald Hackforth, transl., 1952.

 

“You will have to sign page four and make three copies. One for us, one for you and… I’m confident they will require one at the funeral home, Sir,” the big blonde hospital administrator with one missing fake nail pronounced matter-of-factly. Continue reading

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Cold Uterus

by Ann Yuan

I have a cold uterus.

Its hard to explain. In traditional Chinese medicine, one cause of infertility is that your uterus is too cold. Of course, when they saycold,” it doesn’t mean it’s cold to touch. Also, the term uterus” includes the whole set of reproductive systems instead of just the pear-shaped organ itself. The point is, you have to provide an optimal environment in order to grow something as delicate as a fertilized egg.  Continue reading

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Two Syllables

by Virginia Laurie

He was lovely then. A ruffled parakeet. We were crisp as carrot sticks and spent our days sweeping peanut shells off the bar floor. In May he called me a bouquet and took me to a field of sunflowers. Under their unrelenting chins, he sliced me in half like a diorama. There was thatch threaded through the belt-loops of my jeans. I shook like a frog standing up.

By July, I stood up with outsized force, marveling at the ache and the strength of my quadriceps. He was still a bird. Mouth an arrow. In August, there were pillows and I rested around him. He was kind, then, and grateful for me. He kissed my nose, nibbled my earrings. At night he took the trash out. He drove me home. Once he asked me where I’d go if I escaped this city. The sun was bright that day, the pavement smug, and this confused me. I told him I just wanted to be there, with him, in that moment. He left me then; I could sense it. His lips curled then flattened— a shallow rip. Then everything was almost the same. Right, he said. Me too. Continue reading

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Royalty

by Franz Neumann

My parents naming me Royalty wasn’t enough. My praised voice and songwriting, and all the gigs—not enough. I needed to gild myself with an origin story to break through. I needed Touch Ferguson, music executive, to discover me.

I did my homework and had myself hired by Like Heaven, the service that cleaned Touch Ferguson’s house on the beach. I always brought my A game: hair, make-up, and as much allure as my Marian-blue maid outfit would allow.

“You got a date with a mop, Your Majesty? You trying to impress the bathroom mirrors, Princess?”

To clear the audition stage, I told my teasing co-workers that I’d clean the house solo. They didn’t need convincing to nap in the Like Heaven van. I sang as I cleaned, making certain to come off as genuine and not thirsty as I lingered near the security cameras. Touch who?

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