Short fiction by Christopher James, illustrated work by Kelcey Parker Ervick, and a poem by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

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Through the phone I heard him whispering something to someone, then climbing down from something, then pulling on some pants, then plodding along, opening a door, stepping out, and closing the door behind him.  I heard him lighting a cigarette, heard him taking the time to enjoy the first puff before he put the phone back to his ear.
          "I'm here," he said.
--From "Canada," a short story by Christopher James, Wigleaf (August 25, 2016). 

My mom killed herself, I told him.  He said that he was sorry, for me, personally, but at the same time he thought my mom had done a good thing.  The world was overpopulated. Somebody had to take a lead on this, or we'd all be in deep shiatsu.  He was sorry for me personally, he said again, but definitely, on an abstract level, what my mom had done was making a difference in a grander scheme of, you know, what needed doing.
--From "Almost," a short story by Christopher James, Wigleaf (March 10, 2013). 

This is the fish my husband bought in the final year of our marriage. 
--From "The Fish," a comic (or an illustrated short story in the vein of a graphic novel) by Kelcey Parker Ervick, Nashville Review (July 28, 2017).

It goes something like, there once was an alcoholic, because
it always starts with drinking, and his wife, because every husband

must come with one . . . 
--From "Jokes Don't Translate Well from Russian," a poem by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, Sixth Finch (Summer 2017). 

Fiction by Rebekah Matthews, nonfiction by Liz Prato, and poems by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, José Angel Araguz, and Pablo Neruda

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The next morning my roommate and I talk online, complaining about Gerard; we wonder if Gerard's girlfriend really likes him more than she liked girls. We look up Gerard on Facebook. There are photos of him posing in front of the mirror, his shirt pulled up, showing his impressively chiseled abs. There are photos of him with his girlfriend. She is pretty with red curly hair and freckles. There is one picture of her smiling at him the way my girlfriend sometimes smiles at her kids. . . .
--From "I Promise to Never Fall in Love with a Stranger," a short story by Rebekah Matthews, Wigleaf (August 21, 2014). 

My brother's autopsy report arrived in the mail on Christmas Eve.  I'd ordered it the week before. . . . 
--From "Anatomy of an Autopsy Report," nonfiction by Liz Prato, Summerset Review (Fall 2014).   

There is a ghost in the machine of my body. The haunting
happens like this: I loll on the bed, open-mouthed,
acting dead. My husband asks, Are you dead
again? My gallbladder this time. . . .

--From "Ghost in the Machine," a poem by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, Linebreak (September 9, 2014). 

I made up a story for myself once,
That each glove I lost
Was sent to my father in prison . . .

--From "Gloves," a poem by José Angel Araguz, Rattle, Number 28 (Winter 2007), and on the website of the Poetry Foundation. 

Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches . . .
--From "Ode to Enchanted Light," a poem by Pablo Neruda, reprinted on the blog "A Year of Being Here" (June 9, 2014).   

A poem by Sierra DeMulder, a short story by Maile Meloy, & a handful of other pieces

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"The Perm," a poem by Sierra DeMulder, Used Furniture Review (January 9, 2012).

"My Particular Tumor," a short story by Josh Denslow, Wigleaf (January 22, 2012).

"Agustín," a short story by Maile Meloy, Ploughshares (Spring 2008), reprinted in her collection Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (Riverhead Books, 2009, pp. 169-189).

Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, a memoir by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2004) about her relationship with Lucy Grealy, the author of the memoir Autobiography of a Face (HarperCollins, 2003).

"Wolverine Way," a short story by Ryan Ragan, 971 MENU (December 2011).

"To the Long-Distance Caller Who Keeps Hanging Up," a poem by Jeff Worley, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, reprinted in his collection The Only Time There Is (Mid-List Press, 1995, p. 70).

"So Much Happiness," a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words (The Eighth Mountain Press).

Fiction, poetry, and a very short story by Doug Paul Case

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This was after I rolled the windows down, hoping rushing wind would rid my clothes of his cologne. This was after I slid into my car, having barely opened the door, as if I were afraid his neighbors would spot me.

From "Driving Home, I Imagined the Man I'd Just Met, Alone in His Apartment, Washing By Hand the Glass from which I'd Just Drunk," a short story by Doug Paul Case, published in Wigleaf (November 3, 2011).

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"Daddy?" Jennifer said when he went back to the living room.

"What?"

"Would you please read us the funnies?"

The shyness of this request, and the sight of their trusting eyes, made him want to weep. "You bet I will," he said. "Let's sit down over here, all three of us, and we'll read the funnies."

He found it hard to keep his voice from thickening into a sentimental husk as he began to read aloud, with their two heads pressed close to his ribs on either side and their thin legs lying straight out on the sofa cushions, warm against his own. They knew what forgiveness was; they were willing to take him for better or worse; they loved him. Why couldn't April realize how simple and necessary it was to love? Why did she have to complicate everything?

The only trouble was that the funnies seemed to go on forever; the turning of each dense, muddled page of them brought the job no nearer to completion. Before long his voice had become a strained, hurrying monotone and his right knee had begun to jiggle in a little dance of irritation.

"Daddy, we skipped a funny."

"No we didn't, sweetie. That's just an advertisement. You don't want to read that."

"Yes I do."

"I do too."

"But it isn't a funny. It's just made to look like one. It's an advertisement for some kind of toothpaste."

"Read us it anyway."

He set his bite. All the nerves at the roots of his teeth seemed to have entwined with the nerves at the root of his scalp in a tingling knot. "All right," he said. "See, in the first picture this lady wants to dance with this man but he won't ask her to, and here in the next picture she's crying and her friend says maybe the reason he won't dance with her is because her breath doesn't smell too nice, and then in the next picture she's talking to this dentist, and he says..."

He felt as if he were sinking helplessly into the cushions and the papers and the bodies of his children like a man in quicksand. When the funnies were finished at last he struggled to his feet, quietly gasping, and stood for several minutes in the middle of the carpet, making tight fists in his pockets to restrain himself from doing what suddenly seemed the only thing in the world he really and truly wanted to do: picking up a chair and throwing it through the picture window.
(pp. 50-51)

From Revolutionary Road, a novel by Richard Yates (Little, Brown & Co., 1961).

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You live alone and earn a reasonable monthly sum that keeps you comfortable and with enough free time to keep your literary aspirations hopeful. You have a desk drawer full of story ideas written almost wholly on sticky notes, envelopes, and napkins. You bought a Mac, because you think that’s the instrument of choice for creative people like yourself.

From "Anatomy of Two Artists," a short story by Robert John Miller, published in Fiction365 (October 25, 2011).

~
My son recounts the plot of a zombie film
from France. He forgets exactly why,
but one day the dead rise up
and shake off the dust--not ghouls,
staggering with stiff arms,
but as themselves.
They head back into the world willing
to do the usual stuff--eat, buy shoes--
but everything's out of synch. . . .

From "Horror" (p. 8), one of the poems in Recurring Dream by Avra Wing (Pecan Grove Press, 2011). "Horror" first appeared in Prime Decimals.