Volume 6, Issue 3
FICTION
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Menelik had nightmares about a man sitting in black, surrounded by black, cackling until tears welled in his six jaundiced eyes. He woke in terror, ears faintly ringing. He missed his daddy. In spite of what his daddy had done. No doubt that cryinglaughing man had something to do with him being gone. What else could be so funny? The secret he kept tickled him pink.
“Mama,” Menelik came running into the living room late at night, already bent on weeping. He shook her shoulders until she pulled him onto the couch. Draped her arm over his thrashing heart. Weightless in sleep, Namibia told babyboy what nightmares are: longing churned into a spell, opening portals for fears to crawl out. You have to be brave. Can you? I shouldn’t ask you to. You shouldn't know a world to be brave for. [READ FULL WORK]
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POETRY
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Here comes that dude Derrida
And his daimon: Deconstruction. He deconstructed so dreadfully Some think it was mere destruction. If the time for reason has ended Many folks will say: “How splendid!” But when coherence has been suspended Then friends might be unfriended. [READ FULL WORK] |
FICTION
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When he came to Saranac Lake, news of his arrival spread like measles, and the next thing you knew, there'd be a pack of kids dogging him down Main Street, taunting him, chanting, “Flat-Earth Fred; Flat-Earth Fred; how they gonna bury you when you're dead?” He'd cut his eyes at us, wearing a look of withering disdain, not just for his adolescent tormentors but for all of us round-earthers, poor deluded bastards. You could almost hear him thinking it. Well, we round-earthers were thinking the same about him. But the thing about Fred, he didn't merely believe he was right—he knew he was right. His certainty was unshakable; his evidence—to which none of us were privy—incontrovertible.
[READ FULL WORK] |
POETRY
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...And there, I will whip and wind, ravel and sew
millennial and majestic apparel suitable for a page of any dimension, east or west. Quality material will I cut from whole cloth, sewing my pieces together with stitches that curve and weave seams sturdy and steadfast. Get thee to a bookery. I’m busy. Do you not see I’m atoil in my balderdashery?... [READ FULL WORK] |
FICTION
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“But it does not feel like a thought, Doctor.” (Paige was rather fond of italics). “It feels – how can I describe it?” Paige paused. “I feel it physically,” he said at last, decidedly. “It is a physical sensation. When I read a sentence with a semicolon misplaced, I feel a queer consciousness of every hair standing up on the top of my head – just the top – and I hate it! it tickles so.”
I opened a desk-drawer and took out a Trichonopoly. “Have you a hat to wear, Mr Paige?” asked I, as I reached for my matchbox. “Not indoors, Doctor,” said Paige. "A good tight hat is the best way to go.” Paige said something in reply; I did not hear. I wrote discreetly in his case-file: Somatic delusion relating to top of head. I took a long puff of my cigar. [READ FULL WORK] |
Customized illustrations for all published pieces provided by Evgenia Barsheva.