Literal Latte's Archive Database of Stories
O Twinkie Moon By Dawn McDuffie (Vol. 9, Issue 10)
your yellow halo of ice crystals
might mean snow before morning
or moon confections, pale cakes--
cream filling made of oil and imagination. More...
Crossed Signals By Bob Herbstman (Vol. 9, Issue 10)
The first time was really an accident. At about 9:30 one balmy spring
evening, Dave Ferris was driving his three-year-old son, Josh, around, trying to tire him
out, when he spotted the street sign lying on the curb. The metal pole to which the sign
had been fastened was bent in half and looked like a person doubled over after a punch
in the stomach. Dave pulled the car over to the side of the road and glanced back at his
son, who was still fighting to keep his eyes open. More...
The Raven By Jeff Bien (Vol. 9, Issue 10)
The repair came
with cholera and dysentery and manuals of labour
crowbars and the psalms of wild angels
gravediggers digging its eye,
machines gave birth to machines
the soul became a lantern
a wiggish parliament
the singing of a fly,
the wisdom books buried by the wisdom More...
Minding The Gap By Janet Gilman (Vol. 9, Issue 10)
Today on the subway an old man sat on my lap. He just backed right up into me and sat down. I tried to push him off, but he looked from side to side as though something slightly annoyed him, and sat there. The subway was crowded, and some boys from the high school stared and nudged each other and snickered. I kept pushing, but the old man didn’t move. Just when I knew I was going to cry, a woman came over and pulled the old man off my lap. “You’re sitting on that girl,” the woman scolded him. More...
Getting Lucky By Richard Peabody (Vol. 9, Issue 10)
Why does he bother? From the green Adirondack chair on the shady screen porch Renfro can hear the bad guitarist again. He'd noticed him yesterday for the first time. Practicing. Practicing badly. Wa-wahing away like a new lamb nuzzling its mother's udder—that sound. No sense of rhythm or melody, no recognizable chops stolen from anybody's internet tabs or fake book. If only the guy knew that less is more. Probably not playing that loud really, but in the bowl created by the mountains the wah-wah wah-wah-wah careened through the hills like ball bearings down an elaborate roller coaster of sonic gutters. More...
Desert Vacation By Brent Robison (Vol. 9, Issue 10)
The sky is one shade of blue, horizon to horizon. It’s glossy and hard, a vast overturned bowl of fine china baked to brilliant sapphire. Under it, a broken line of humans stretches long and thin across the flats, then bunches thick at steep places where footing is treacherous. Each silent hiker is one bone, one vertebra in the spine of a snake that winds its way over and around crag and boulder, skin against stone. More...
Close to Home By Amy L Jenkins (Vol. 9, Issue 10)
DJ spotted a deer trail that looked as if it led to the Menomonee River while I tried to think of a way to explain death. The space for my words imploded as my son moved away from me toward the passage through the trees. It is July second, the date of a full moon in the month that Buddhists believe the dead return to visit the living. More...
Welcome to Tuesday, 1:49 am, I love you.
Welcome to ice pond, pink sky, it’s not always like this.
Welcome, animals are killed for various parts of their bodies.
Welcome to the smell of blue dish soap, we are naming the babies today.
Welcome, I am getting MURDER tattooed on my hipbone.
Welcome to the country, it may be wartime, ask the swallows.
More...
I will die wrong.
Fully, to be sure, there is no other way.
But slightly to the left.
My teeth will grow belligerent,
refuse to loosen their hold.
All varieties of small animals
will be attracted to my grave.
More...
The Perfect Story By Bruce Holland Roger (Vol. 9, Issue 9)
At the English department’s retirement party for Professor Bertram Penny, I drank too much. From across the room, I even caught the old boy’s eye and raised a glass in his honor. No one was happier than I was that we would soon be rid of him.
More...
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