David Borofka is the author of HINTS OF HIS MORTALITY (winner of the 1996 Iowa Short Fiction Award) […]

It sounds like a joke, doesn’t it, or the beginning of one? Three gunmen enter a bar? Only there were two nearly identical gunmen rather than three of a different order, and Que Sera was more restaurant for the senior citizen set than bar for those with lives yet to live, and the joke, well, there was no joke. Who but a sociopath would joke about a mass shooting in this day and age?

Debbie Graber’s short fiction has appeared in Short Story, Long, BarBar, Zyzzyva and Harper’s, among other journals. Her […]

Rich and I hit a few balls, when he pulled me off the court, his finger up to his lips. He led me down a hallway to an alcove. The sun streamed in through a skylight, illuminating a balcony above. Everything was silent except for the echo of my Adidas’ rubber soles scraping against the floor.

Sat with two guys at chow.  One a ball turret gunner I flew with a few missions back.  Before takeoff he sees me looking at the Jewish star on his sleeve and says if he goes down he wants those Nazi bastards to know exactly who he is.

James Sutherland-Smith was born in Scotland in 1948, but has lived in Slovakia since 1989. He spent his […]

Johnny Elder of Melbourne, Australia, is an ancient journalist, ornithologist and clumsy ballroom dancer. He’s enjoyed a fairly […]

We walk along slowly, as a way of catching our breath,
holding it close and unpolluted, the old radio,
in front of her breast like a compass:

I could do with a distraction/from the singing line,/the soft wail of the past/and noisy electronic riffs of the present./Let them open the future/with its crapulous saviours on YouTube.