An Aria in Peru ?by Christopher Niemeyer Some people make trips to other countries only to immerse themselves in the? ordinary things they like to do back home.? There was that American retiree from Cuernavaca, a city full of American retirees. On vacation in Peru, she was now staying at their hotel.?? She told them […]

Over and Out by Julie Morgan King Simon parked the scooter and jogged up the stairs. He felt as light as a cloud. The audition had gone well. He?d taken the routine advice he?d dished out to truckloads of muddled patients over the years: breathe slowly, listen and focus. ? The gospels songs were sweetly […]

It was my friend Usha who introduced me to the new arrival in our locality. The astrologer was old, looked wise and he wore a saffron robe. He sat on a charpoy under a banyan tree, sheaves of paper stacked under his folded legs. A well fed green parrot cackled inside a rusted cage. Women of different shapes and sizes, huddled together close to him on a coir mat battling the summer heat.

At the end of the shift, he pushed a crumpled nondescript envelope containing three twenty dollar bills into my palm, but I left feeling empty-handed; he told me I didn?t get the job.

I pause on the fifth step, pursued by no one. And nothing to see, except a painting on the wall of a man wearing my floral nightgown, Colt 45 in hand, a glossy finish. A lousy painting, nothing but an exact reproduction of the last photograph I took of him. Is there nothing left for the imagination anymore? You project a photo slide onto a canvas, then you just fill it in with paint. But it?s so lifelike I have an instant?s reflex to whisk myself out of harm?s way, my head down low, to duck the bullets. But no bullets come, they?ve disappeared, chronologically speaking.

Off The Page ?by Ren?e Hankins ?We haven?t been in one novel in the last five months. Not one.? Binky, the dapper protagonist, is a wanna be stat man. He?s a walking rememberer of current trends. ?How many drafts are you makin? through? I?ve been makin? it to two,? I testify. ?I?ve made three works […]

? Gone ?by Ronald Robert Moore   Joe and Sparky ambled between the linear rows of orange trees. Joe proudly gripped the Sharpshooter bee-bee gun his father had given him for his tenth birthday. He squinted and peered down the long straight furrows between the rows. In a salute his right hand protected his eyes […]