Paul knew his new girlfriend Lydia was better than his ex-girlfriend Lydia. She was kinder. She was more considerate. She was also prettier once she got all done up. She liked what Paul liked—at least more so than Lydia had—trendy …
Fiction
The Albatross Riddle
There’s a riddle I know about an albatross. Maybe you know it already. It goes like this:
Two men walk into a restaurant where the special of the day is albatross. One man eats …
$9000
Dawn was coming through the windows, too quickly, always too quickly, moving much faster than my mind and body ever could. My wife Sharon, beautiful in middle age (and beautiful always!), was sound asleep next to me, her ear pressed …
Go On Then
Boy, brush your teeth. Two minutes, two times. Floss is cheap here, and we’re going to use it. Boy, bury the soup bones deep, deeper than the scavengers can dig or smell. Six feet deep. Boy, don’t forget how much …
Full of Grace
If only the sun can take its sizzling eyes off Ujuamara and go bother someone else. Vehicles and motorcycles, wheelbarrow pushers and trekkers parade the street, raising dust, selling this, selling that, laughing (how dare they?). But in Ujuamara’s world, …
The Last Great Artist of Moscow
There’s nothing lonelier than breakfast on a broken heart, so Yuri’d gone to work hungry. A real starving artist, just like that asshole Stepan had wanted. Only now, standing in the middle of the forest outside Moscow State, dressed as …
Paula Cole’s 2 AM Walgreens Apology
The 24-hour pharmacy line is too long, wavy drunk, so Paula Cole stares at the carpet (which isn’t gray but also somehow definitely is) when it comes on, her most successful song—a banger, really. In drops the string of do-do-do, …
Cake
The baby was sleeping when the front door slid open. Rachel was in the kitchen baking a cake, rummaging in the cupboards for icing sugar. She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and when she turned, …
The Lady Baguette
She didn’t mind, she told me– to nourish, to sustain– this is the role of the mother, and how the body is made. Women who become mothers nurse their children, and mothers who become baguettes nurse the world. Should I …
Love Is a Piano Dropped from a Fourth Story Window
Nathan is spending his thirtieth birthday alone in a diner. Alone unless you count the pretty, distracted woman in glasses—the only other patron—sitting several booths down. And he does. Nathan leafs through a menu he knows well, stealing glances as …
