Fiction
The Cub by Liz Wachtler
We met at a party. One of those perfect nights, keg-fueled and warm. It was the end of the school year, Junior year of college, and– whatever. That part isn’t interesting, because it happens to everyone, all the time. Meeting someone, and talking, and laughing, and exchanging phone numbers, and kissing (urgently, I have to go! My ride is waiting! Call me!). Oh, Elsa, with your soft hair and wide shoulders, and your voice like sandpaper, low and grainy. Elsa, with your hand on my neck, below my ear. Call me, Elsa. Let’s go on dates. Let’s hold hands in movie theaters, and drink cheap beer together, because we can, because we want to. Let’s be young and frivolous together. Let’s spend the summer naked together. Be my girl.
I’m A Video and I’m Almost Over by Alex Gomez
This my jam. I remember Britta used to play this for me. Who? Britta. She went to camp with me. Sports camp. First kiss. Smudged knees, grass stains, and peanut butter. All gone, I guess. When did you go? Go where? Go where? I can’t remember. Look it up on Facebook. I tagged you. I tagged Britta. I tagged you and Britta. Together. On the Internet.
The Fisherman’s Eclipse by James A. Davenport
That day we did not catch much on the boats and we came in early. Most of the day it was raining intermittently. When I got home I left my bicycle leaning on the house and climbed the ladder once more. My grandfather was still observing the sky through his piece of tinted glass.
The Darkest Hour of the Brightest Hero of the Soviet Union by James A. Davenport
Yuri Gagarin is depressed because he is stressed. Before, Yuri Gagarin had never left the Soviet Union. Now Yuri Gagarin had been to eleven foreign countries and countless places within the USSR. Yuri Gagarin had met journalist after journalist. Yuri Gagarin had been on television, radio, reproduced in puppet theater in the Chelyabinsk Oblast. Yuri Gagarin is exhausted.
Watching Gary Go by Liz Wachtler
On Saturdays, you and your father and I would go on adventures together. These I remember as the clearest afternoons, the closest approximation of what I had pictured my life would be like when I first found out you’d be coming. We’d drive out of town and picnic at the side of the road. It was summer, and heavy-hot, but we drank it in. Your father would chase you in the woods, and I’d sit on the hood of the car and listen to your half-terrified, half-delighted screams.
Casa de Mañana by David Ruelas
They combed the sand looking for beach glass. She had taught him that green, clear, and brown were the most common. Around each corner of the beach they found a new cove all their own to wade through—the water perfectly clear and ankle deep. Today, among the handfuls of smooth curves of green and milky white, they found a few of the rarities, a blue and even a red, and threw them into a small plastic bag.
