Month: May 2025

Two Stories by Linda Drach

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

TRAVEL & LEISURE

I’d see them in the cardiology waiting room. Not every time, but often. The man, shuffling behind an aluminum walker, his right foot dragging; the woman, slowing her gait to keep pace. Always, her hand rested lightly on his bicep. That was completely unnecessary. A gesture of tenderness, I guess. He looked like my second husband. She looked like the Starbucks barista my husband shacked up with before divorcing me. I’d stare at them until the woman felt me looking and glanced over to where I’d parked myself near the giant aquarium so I could reap the calming benefits of fish swishing. My eyes were flamethrowers that singed her bangs, burned through her skull, and incinerated the smoking cessation poster that hung on the wall behind her. Satisfied, I’d pretend to turn back to Travel & Leisure or Yacht World. 

That was before my doctor shunted me off to hospice.

It was strange. I hated that waiting room. But when the couple appeared I forgot that I was waiting. Suddenly, I had energy and a sense of control, whereas just moments before, I’d had neither. I liked sketching in the details of their lives, imagining the bank statements and what was parked in the driveway. I liked thinking about her slutty lingerie, long abandoned, the elastic going slack in a bottom dresser drawer. I liked thinking about her bitching to her friends over too many glasses of Sauvignon Blanc about the pill bottles crowding her quartz countertops. About the long, tedious nights building puzzles instead of fucking. 

Those were good afternoons for me.

It’s been months since I was there. But sometimes, as I’m staring down the teddy bear the volunteers insist on staging at the foot of my bed, I think of that couple. I wonder if he’s in a wheelchair now. I wonder if she’s gotten fat. I hope she’s gotten fat. These daydreams are necessary; they counteract all this false cheer. I heard one of the nurses talking about me, the only thing keeping that one alive is spite. I’m still listening for rubber wheels rolling down the hallway. To feel a little surge.

THE FARM

Pat calls on a Monday night to tell me my nephew – his son – is dead. 

He never says dead. He says Joel is gone. But I know what he means right away, like I knew when our mom told us Sparky or Boo or Snowflake went to the farm, so they could run freely instead of eking out their short doggy lives in our cramped backyard. 

Gone. That’s all he says. That’s all he can say. 

When I get to the ER, Pat is slumped on a vinyl couch, yowling through clenched fists, like a cat with its tail stuck in a slammed door. The chaplain patting his back looks glad to see me. Five bug-eyed youth silently circle the room, like a school of guppies – stoic little fish, who spend their short lives sucking lines of shit off the bottom of their tank and then spitting them out to try again. Relentless in their efforts to find something delicious. Each time, it’s shit. These are Joel’s 12-Step friends. His goddamn friends, who watched him die.

It’s time to see Joel, but Pat says he can’t – he doesn’t want to see him this way, which is dead. When we were kids, I always took care of the lesser burials. Dozens of goldfish, two turtles, three lizards, and a chinchilla. A grim menagerie interred in our mother’s garden, near the concrete statue of Mother Mary. Our household was rough on living things. This is why I never had children. 

The chaplain leads me through a set of double doors, and there’s Joel, wearing the same flannel shirt he was wearing on Saturday. Our boy needs a haircut. His copper locks, the same shade as mine, are shaggy at his neck and fall haphazardly across the petals of his cheeks. His hand is still warm – only a little bit cooler than my brother’s. Where are you, Joel? I whisper in his ear. The chaplain fidgets. He’s certain Joel is strolling through God’s cosmic vivarium. I shoot him a look and he leaves us alone. Can he tell how much I hate him right now? He knows my type. A lapsed Whatever, with my poems and pop songs and coffee can ashes, making half-assed attempts at the everlasting – when what I want is the farm. 

I tell Joel if believing made it so, I’d make myself believe it. I’d send you to a party that goes on forever and never gets out of hand. Where you could play three-handed pinochle with your mother and grandfather and share a bottle of magic bourbon. The kind that won’t lead to black eyes or scarred livers. I’d make sure you’re happy. That you know you’re enough. I’m crying now, with my head on his chest. Bawling, really, like a motherless calf. I picture the floribunda roses framing my mother’s backyard shrine. Vivid red. Heavenly scent. Climbing the chain link, spilling over in its vigor. Back every year, despite our neglect.

Linda Drach is a poet and writer, public health program manager, and volunteer writing group facilitator for the nonprofit Write Around Portland. Her writing has been published in The Bellingham Review, Cagibi, CALYX, Cathexis Northwest, The Timberline Review, and elsewhere. She studies and teaches at The Writers Studio.

Double Dutch by Jasmine Khaliq

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment
It sounds like gibberish, I said. It’s Double Dutch,
they said, and their grandma invented it.

A boy my age, a girl my sister’s. I wasn’t sure;
they lied about plenty—they were royalty

on a faraway island, their father was an astronaut,
their names were not their real names.

But the language I could hear was real as any.
Pattern I could attain. If I listened closely. If

I really tried. A lot of B’s, a lot of I’s. In his voice
my own name like an alien’s. I surprised them

after two weeks, sauntered into conversation
leaning blasé against their house, air

hot as any Western midday, mid-July.
A door unbolted. Talking in plain sight.

Selves and syllables doubling.
Secret language with the boy

across the street. We talked
about everything, nothing.

I wish I had a dog.
My dad is going to Mars.

They fought last night. I don’t want school to begin—
Anything. Just to speak.

We had never been so close
and we would never be so close again.

The differences between our lives closing
soon over our heads. Jordan’s rabbit died.

Summer is coming to an end.
What’s your favorite color, again?

Jasmine Khaliq is a Pakistani Mexican American poet born and raised in Northern California. Her work is found in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, The Rumpus, Bennington Review, Best New Poets 2023, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from University of Washington, Seattle. Currently, Jasmine is a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah. She can be found at jasminekhaliq.com.

A Reading List for the End of the World by Julia Rose Greider

On By okaydonkey7In flash fiction1 Comment

Robin and I are coping well with the end of the world, by which I mean we usually wake up by eleven and agree that eleven is not bad at all. We start our day with reading: Robin prefers Plato, while I prefer Garfield. My love, ever the philosophy major, has drawn up a list of essential texts and downloaded as many as our laptops can hold, since the Internet will go out any day now. We argued for weeks over whether Garfield deserved to survive the apocalypse. Robin said everyone would hate a fat cat when they were starving, and I retorted that wrestling with Plato would burn too many calories. Eventually I pointed out that matters would likely snowball too fast anyway for starvation to be our cause of death, and if Robin wanted me to be bearable to live with until the end came in whatever way it did, they’d better stockpile some Garfield. They’ve never been able to resist me.

Once we’ve read our fill, it’s time for a late lunch. Robin insists that we discuss our respective literatures to keep our minds agile. They say we’ll need our problem-solving abilities when things get worse. This is another reason they resent my Garfield: they say it does not stimulate the brain. But I point out that, unlike Plato, Garfield is very good at procuring sustenance. While Robin descends into the cellar to make a selection from our menu of freeze-dried camping food, I go out to the yard and look up. Each day it becomes more difficult to breathe. The sky toys with the hues of an oil spill, sometimes green, or yellow, or purple. Most of the time, though, we are cloaked in a grayish-brown that shimmers vaguely, like some vengeful god changed his desktop to a color named death.

We force down our reconstituted pad thai or bun-less lentil sloppy joes or scrambled eggs which, in their freeze-dried form, are crispy like chips. For now we’re still vegetarians, but the vegetarian meals down in the cellar are getting low, and pretty soon we’ll be reverting to a more primitive carnivorous state. The idea makes Robin anxious, even though I point out that the animals we’ll be eating have already been dead and bagged for years.

After lunch, we have our nature walk. If I were in charge, I would probably take a nap instead. Doom’s approach makes me snoozy. But Robin says we have a responsibility to exist in the world while it lasts. I slip my hand into theirs, and they lead me into the woods and make me look at things. They make me look at trees and mushrooms and birds (if we’re lucky), and they call them immense rough-skinned intelligences and fleshy fruiting bodies of fungi and the ones who could still escape if there was anywhere to go. They exhort me to fix the images in my mind, and I say what good will it do for a dying beast to remember other dying beasts?

But I only say this in my head, otherwise it makes Robin pull their hand away and pat at their eyes. Robin still finds hope useful, and I try to be sympathetic.

The woods are quiet these days. When we stand still, my ears feel the fuzzy silence of earplugs, like there might be something to hear if only I could take them out. But I can’t. So we don’t stand still very often; instead, we create the illusion of life by cracking twigs under our feet. Today I nearly step on something else: a matchbook. Robin bends to pick it up. The cardboard, still dry, bears the unfamiliar insignia of a bar called Dante’s. Someone has been burning the matches; only two are left. Robin says, Who—? And I say, Don’t think about it. Robin stares at the packet in their palm, and by the time I lead us home, it’s nearly dark. The sun doesn’t set because it’s never there to begin with. The pall just dims and dims.

After dinner, Robin usually tries for something more contemporary: Hegel or Nietzsche, or Foucault if they’re feeling cheeky. But tonight they make me sit while they read Mencius aloud, and for a few minutes I admire the length of their fingers absentmindedly turning the matchbook over and over. They’re looking for answers, but I already have mine. So I excuse myself to the bathroom. They think I have a weak stomach, that the camping food doesn’t agree with me. I let them think this even though it isn’t particularly flattering. In the bathroom, I sit with my back against the tub and grope around in the depths of the cabinet under the sink. From beneath the rolls of toilet paper, I pull out a stack of small square pages that I ripped off years ago from a cartoon-a-day calendar. If we’re still alive when the toilet paper runs out, these pages will see things they never asked to see. But for now, I peruse a few of the cartoons every night. Sometimes I find one that makes me laugh even though it never did before. People used to get that worked up over a family dinner? A fender bender? A fractious boss? Ha-ha. The days are hopelessly out of order, and I never bother rearranging them.

Robin and I go to bed early. I fit myself against the soft curve of their back and nestle my nose into their neck, where the musk of wheat and lilies soothes me just the same as it did when our ends were not so imminent.

In the darkest part of the night, I wake. Robin is sitting up. They’ve lit one of the matches, and it blazes towards their fingertips. Their face is shining with silent tears. Mencius, they say, believed in the fundamental goodness of humans. Shouldn’t we be struggling towards survival like the products of evolution that we are? Shouldn’t we be devoting our time to useful pursuits, figuring out how to hunt and forage and make fire?

I hold my breath as the flame gobbles its own lifeblood. For months this question has hovered between us unspoken. Robin has tried to ask it before, and I’ve stopped them with kisses, eaten the words out of their mouth. Yes, my sage, I want to say. You and I will be the library, and the library must go on.

Just before the flame blisters their fingers, Robin extinguishes it with one sharp hiss of breath. Into the black silence, against the blue memory of fire that twitches before my eyes, I find I can only speak the truth.

I fumble the matchbook out of Robin’s hand and rip off the last match. I fold the book around the nubby tip; from it, I pull a conflagration. And to Robin’s question, I say no. Because survival—isn’t that how we got here in the first place?

Julia Rose Greider lives in New Hampshire and works in Vermont as a public librarian. Her fiction has been published in Nat. Brut, West Trade Review, and CALYX Journal, and she is an alum of the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop.

Bikini Atoll by Rowan Pollard

On By okaydonkey7In poetryLeave a comment
A wild driver, her feather coat flying in the wind,
Cadillac convertible southwards out of town but again
I found her half-sunken into the reservoir.
I’ve had enough, she said, I’ve done everything twice.
I’ve been a storm chaser, I shot Kennedy, twelve years
I spent in Vegas drinking gold and winning. My
velvet’s all worn out and I’m stuck here and I can’t
remember my own name.
I made one up for her, something American, Arizona
Castle, Georgia Crossroads, Mississippi Bravo.
I entertained her for a while until the shock wore off,
and once home a hurricane stuck the tower block and kept us
stuck. Some days, I was sick of tracing a trail of ash. I was sick
of extravagance. Where were my pearls to swallow? My
untruthful movie star carpets and gunshot near-misses?
I didn’t miss a word of lies but I got sick anyway.
Last night, under the low moon, I said I loved her. She told me
I like Mississippi best. Like the river always moving through the land.
The dam burst that morning, and I looked for her in the clear
dull water. I thought I’d find some goodbye note and
more, but beside our front door was her feather coat like a snakeskin.
The Cadillac drove toward the sun.
Mississippi, bravo.

Rowan Pollard is a writer and poet living in a nowhere town somewhere in the UK. He has been published in Apocalypse Confidential.

Two Stories by Rachel Lastra

On By steve cIn flash fictionLeave a comment

Poor Cheryl

She’s the one we pile it on like a damn donkey on a tourist trek through the Peruvian mountains, opening up her saddle bags and dumping in all that shit, leaving no room for anything but Yes, okay—and But I—and What if we—and I didn’t mean—and I’m sorry I—and Maybe we could—never let her finish a fucking sentence, though each of us blames the others, says we’re not the ring leader of this particular circus, the guide of this donkey ride winding up the mountainside, thinks we see her, thinks we’re kinder, thinks we’d save her if we could, but we can’t, can only save ourselves, can only keep our eyes open wide in sympathy at Cheryl when we’re sure no one’s looking, thinks this makes it okay that she’s a punching bag-scapegoat-doormat-dupe-sap-pushover-pigeon-victim-sacrifice, because that’s what she is, was born to be, that’s what’s needed to feed a prowl of high school pumas in winged eyeliner and platforms, teeth bared, slinking through the grass, scenting blood, ready to pounce before we can be seen as prey.

Love Me Like a Reptile

The salmon has all been eaten. Only a few half-spears of purple asparagus, picked up just this morning from the farmer’s market, litter the otherwise empty dinner plates. The wine bottle is tapped but our glasses are full, golden in the evening light.

“Whoever came up with the word ‘splurge’ must’ve been a great influencer.” Fred leans back in his chair, and I see him. I do. Square-jaw handsome, perfect hair. “They must’ve been a great influencer,” he repeats. “Because splurge is a horrible word.” 

Fred enjoys these kinds of thought exercises. He’s a data analyst—don’t ask me what that means. I know it pays well. Most days Fred has the personality of wet cardboard, but he has his moments. He calls me his statistically significant other.

I wanted him to go with me to the market this morning, pictured us strolling arm in arm through the aisles, woven market bags in hand, pausing to feed each other samples of honey and twenty-dollar artisanal cheese. We’d linger near a fruit stand and I’d feed him something juicy. I’d push the hair off his forehead and he’d kiss me like he wanted to merge with me, consume me. He’d taste like summer and lust and peaches warmed by the sun.

But Fred had given me a peck on the cheek and said, “Babe, I’m too hungover.” 

And we don’t even have any woven market bags. 

I drag my fork through the olive oil coating my white IKEA dinner plate and don’t snap at Fred’s conversational bait. He keeps talking anyway, between swigs of white wine, pink tongue glistening in his open mouth. I lick the fork tines clean and think of other, more horrible words. Slurp. Fester. Sloppy. Flaccid. Needing. Wanting. Solo.

I look out the screen door onto our balcony. There’s my neighbor out on his, a mirror of ours. If he looks up, he’ll see me. I will him to, thighs clenched. He leans his elbows on the railing and looks down into the courtyard at the balding trees, the small, sun-bleached climbing structure, the pair of swings sagging like bags under the eyes of a sober drunk.

He’s in his 60s, my neighbor. Bearded, long gray ponytail. Snake tattoo. Strong arms bared by a neon yellow muscle shirt. I bet he could lift me, easy. He’s playing music again: Motorhead.

Fred says: “I mean, listen to this. ‘I splurged on a new computer.’ Sounds gross, right?”

I say: “Uh-huh.”

He reaches for the gold ribbon of the white bakery box on the counter. I stand up. Clear the dinner plates. Grab the white World Market dessert plates. Sit back down.

Outside, my neighbor turns and she emerges behind him. Same age, give or take. Dye-black hair slithering down her back in a tail as long as his. Yin to his yang. She runs a hand up his arm, over the softball of his shoulder, curls her nails in. Then their mouths open, tongues bulging in each other’s cheeks like gumballs. Her other hand grips his ponytail—firmly. His hand snakes up her back to do the same. And then they stand like that, wound around each other, tongue-kissing in the open air.

Fred pulls a cream puff from the bakery box and offers it to me. I decline. Flash of white teeth, jaw wide as if he will swallow it whole. Cream splurges from the end of the puff.

“Fred,” I begin.

The neighbors have gone back inside. They drew the blinds only halfway but I can’t see anything. I bet she’s on top.

Cream dots the corners of Fred’s mouth. I could lick him clean with my forked tongue. 

I open my mouth. Close it. Open.

“I want some.”

Rachel Lastra’s stories have appeared in Tiny Molecules, Barrelhouse, Smokelong Quarterly, Apparition Lit, and other places. Her work was highly commended in the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize and a finalist in the Flash Frog flash fiction contest. She is a student in the graduate writing program at Johns Hopkins University and is working on a novel. Find her at rachellastra.com.