July 2024 | fiction
That day at the airport on the way to my hometown best friend’s funeral, when you couldn’t keep the newsfeed of the fiery midair collision out of your phone, even as you waited to board.
I tried to choose my seat wisely, but it was 5 a.m., and I hadn’t been home in twelve years, that suburban Ohio life not focusing: I had remade myself into an Angeleno who hung out not at the local dive bar with high school friends, but at a coffee shop in Los Feliz, an exhibition at the Getty. I slumped into a window seat when a woman and her teenage son eyed me.
I sank deeper into my seat and put on headphones, but she had me.
“Good morning!” She smelled clean and crisp, like hotel soap.
My polite nod only encouraged her. “Too bad, isn’t it? About the pilot.” She pointed to her phone’s image of the two jets colliding in midair. In the next frame, a young aviator smiled at the camera, a helmet under his arm. “So young. So handsome.”
She leaned in, whispering, “He had a bad feeling. He didn’t want to go.”
I knew the images: here he was, alive, about to climb into his cockpit. Still alive as he began his final descent with contrails blooming flames. The news stories began with the planes engulfed – images out of order. That upset me yesterday as I packed.
“Where are you headed?”
“Home,” I said, but it tripped on my tongue. We’d tried to keep up through the years, but texts and calls were no match for the pull of hometown husbands and the needs of small children.
“Where is that?”
But I backtracked. “He didn’t want to go? The pilot?”
“No, he told his wife something felt wrong. He tried to stop it.”
A week before she died, I had a strange cosmic nudge to call my friend, a sense to check in after so much radio silence.
I didn’t call. When I heard that she was gone, I couldn’t let myself grieve, as if it was my fault. I’d known, just like the pilot.
The lady patted my hand. Soon she was snoring.
It would be a long time before we landed. I closed my eyes, but I kept seeing the pilot, and he was smiling at me, waving one last time as he took off into the perfect blue of morning.
Sharon Lee Snow
A Pushcart nominee, Sharon Lee Snow earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida. Her short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been published in Jelly Bucket, South 85, Gulf Stream, and other journals. Connect with her on Twitter and Instagram @sharonleesnow and her website www.sharonleesnow.com
July 2024 | fiction
- We sit on the banks of the river on the last day of summer. The drought has left only a trickle down the center of the dry river bed, so there is no sound of water to distract us from the words hanging between us. Nothing will be final until one of us walks away.
- We arrive at a pool party hosted by your coworker. After starving myself to fit into a bikini, I need only three watery cocktails to trip and fall into the pool. You leave, embarrassed, and your boss has to drive me home.
- We stand near the confluence of two rivers in the middle of the country as we roadtrip from one coast to the other. Silence for miles, followed by sharp words stabbing each other until we’re hollowed out. The next day we’re overly polite, as if we just met.
- We keep returning to each other, a bit out of love, but mostly out of fear. We’re more miserable apart than we are together, we tell ourselves, holding space until someone better comes along.
- We end for good standing next to the ocean. Giving up like a bloody boxer who can’t take another round. The tears you try to hide taste like the sea as I kiss you goodbye.
Jen McConnell
Jen McConnell has published prose and poetry in more than forty literary magazines, and her work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. Her current work can be found in Does it Have Pockets?, Bridge Eight, and the tiny journal. Her first story collection, “Welcome, Anybody,” was published in 2012. Learn more at jenmcconnell.com.
July 2024 | fiction
Grandpa would say go outside I can’t hear myself think and if the air was clear and bright the mother between us said run, let your lungs gobble that good air, get your Vitamin D, and sometimes the air was thick with low-lying fog by the river, and the mother was shrouded, warning of slippery rocks, stray dogs, of Mr. Bob—who couldn’t live near a school—and sometimes the air was searing and the mother shimmered, drew us to the shade, silent while we bickered—having long understood that we did it for sport—and sometimes the air was sharp as icicles and the mother between us said put your scarf over your nose and mouth and sometimes the air held something sulfurous from downriver factories or—worse—that funk from the rendering plant and she said go inside, go drink some water, go help your Grandpa for a change you know he does his best, he’s just doing his best.
Michelle Morouse
Michelle Morouse’s work has appeared recently in Vestal Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Gemini, Midwest Review, Prose Online, Bending Genres, Best Microfiction, The MacGuffin, and Unbroken. She is a Detroit area pediatrician and a Pushcart nominee.
July 2024 | fiction
In the far away, newer, and still shifting western frontiers, there once was a watchman uniformed in olive green who looked over a border, an imaginary one some argued, since a natural delineation this border was not, but instead had been drawn by humans through migration, invasion, occupation, relocation, warfare, purchases, and treaties; now this line manifested itself as a rusty and porous chain-link fence adorned on top with tetanus inducing garland. This watchman, in a grand and big-wheeled gasoline-fueled and color-coordinated-to-his-uniform motor vehicle, would give chase at daring speeds to reach and capture people who, according to this artificial line, were not supposed to be on his side of it. Parallel to it, a massive and glorified irrigation canal that brought verdant promises to a once arid desert served as a secondary boundary this watchman conveniently patrolled from, since the people he would follow with night vision binoculars had grown immune to barbed wire but not to the dangers of deep running water. These people didn’t know it, but they were invisibly watched by another whom they feared as equally as the watchman, a ghostly woman in a dress known to appear waterside at night crying for her drowned children. One night lit with a full moon, while the torrid waters of this wide canal sparkled like stars, the watchman gave chase to a car he believed was loaded with the unwanted; chasing over a bridge across this immense canal, this ghostly woman and secret guardian of the others, made an appearance on the passenger’s seat of this watchman’s speeding grand motor vehicle; elegantly dressed in a white spectral dress, she appeared seated not uttering a word, not looking at him either, just sitting there perfectly postured looking straight ahead, not acknowledging his existence by gesture or word, but simply by being there. The scare made the watchman swerve out of control and roll over, and down the grand green and white Ford Bronco went into the All-American Canal; the words BORDER PATROL emblazoned across it slowly faded as it sank. He died trapped, drowning under the waters of this massive canal that humans use to provide and divide so much, but not before believing, if even for one instant, in the ghostly woman dressed in white.
Omar Bárcena
Omar Bárcena, born and raised straddling the line dividing Alta from Baja California in the border city of Mexicali, Baja California, raised between his hometown and Calexico, his childhood and adolescence were divided between two countries and two languages whose border he crossed: often daily. At 18, he left the currently delineated USA/México border to attend university in San Luis Obispo, California, where he obtained an architecture degree. Omar has lived in Mexicali, Calexico, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, Paris, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Borrego Springs, but the border splitting has never left him. His poetry has appeared in the Hawai’i Review issue 89 – La Trayectoria del Latinx, by the University of Hawai’i in Manoa and in The Very Edge Poems, by Flying Ketchup Press, of which he became a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2020, and his first collection of poetry, Poemas desde el otro lado, which deals `with being on the opposite side of things, was published in 2021 by Valparaíso Ediciones of Granada, Spain. He has since obtained a certificate in Creative Writing from UCLA Extension, become a finalist for the 2024 Harbor Review Chapbook Editor’s Prize, and is pursuing a bilingual MFA in creative writing from Mount Saint Mary’s University of Los Angeles.
April 2024 | fiction
You’ll never guess what I just found. Ann steps over the pile of boxes blocking the doorway, a small black object in her hand. Haven’t seen one of these in years.
She hands it over. An old floppy disc.
Bloody hell, me neither. Where was it?
Found it unpacking a box of your old college stuff. Any idea what’s on it?
Not sure. He turns it over. There’s a crack in one corner, and an illegible red scribble on the label. Chloe Hide’s handwriting. Oh.
The class was paired into teams. He and Chloe were put together. For the whole afternoon she sat beside him, shoulders bare in the muggy heat, red ponytail down her back. When she stretched her arms over her head, he craned forwards to peek at her breasts, turning away as she relaxed, afraid she’d catch him staring. They talked and he made her laugh. At the end of the lesson, they saved their work on a disc and he promised to look after it. Outside, the wind tossed her hair over her shoulder, the clear sky glinted in her eyes. Ask if she wants to go get a cup of tea, or something to eat maybe. Just ask her.
OK, great. See you tomorrow. Her smile showed her braces.
He watched her turn the corner, then ran the other way for the bus. Chloe walked home alone. The police recovered her two weeks later.
He strokes his thumb across the red ink. It doesn’t smudge. It dried decades ago.
It’s nothing. Just some old college junk.
I’ll throw it out then if you want. Can’t use it for anything. Ann holds out her hand.
No. It’s fine.
Ann shrugs and goes back upstairs. He sits down, and slides the disc into his pocket.
Sam comes from East Yorkshire but now resides in Lancashire. He recently completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and has had two books published, one in 2020 by Alban Lake, and the other in 2018 after it won 1st Prize in the National Association of Writers’ Group’s 2017 novella competition. When not writing, he likes cooking, hiking, and spending time with his fiancé and his cat.
Sam Graham
April 2024 | fiction
The concert hall took a direct hit during the first week the city was shelled. Sandbags piled alongside the walls protected the stained glass windows of the former church, but the roof was punctured and the interior set ablaze. With rockets landing in the quarter and water mains shattered, the fire burned unabated. When the fighting ended days later, crews began to sift through debris. Combing through the ashes, broken plaster, and fallen brickwork, the orchestra conductor located the thick bound volumes of old concert programs. He dusted them off, smiling to himself. Their history had been saved. The roof and rows of charred seats could be replaced. Fortunately, most of the musicians had taken their valuable instruments home with them. Digging deeper, he found stacks of music stands, ash-covered but intact. Beneath them, though singed and water-stained, sheets of music for the Friday concert were still legible.
Looking at the soiled pages, a thought came to him. Three violinists lived within walking distance. If they were home, if they had their instruments, and if he could contact them, they might be able to play. The orchestra had not canceled a performance in forty-eight years. As conductor, he had never missed a concert. It would be a haphazard orchestra for a haphazard audience. A few violins would barely be heard over the distant explosions, sirens, and the barking of stray dogs. But they could perform, their history maintained.
That late afternoon, with snow falling, two men and a woman in overcoats, played the Brahms violin concerto on the steps of the shattered concert hall. A half-dozen shivering rescue workers clustered around a small fire listened, some closing their eyes. A pair of reporters recorded the orchestra with their cell phones, broadcasting the performance to the refugees, the fighters, the relief workers, the traumatized, and the bedridden of Kiev.
Mark Connelly’s fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Cream City Review, The Ledge, Smoky Blue Arts and Literary Magazine, Change Seven, Light and Dark, 34th Parallel, The Chamber Magazine, Mobius Blvd., and Digital Papercut. In 2005 Texas Review Press published his novella Fifteen Minutes, which received the Clay Reynolds Prize. His most recent short story “That Forgotten Monday” appeared in The Chamber Magazine in October 2023 and was published in Möbius Blvd in December.
Mark Connelly
