Literal Latte

Swallows

Christie B. Cochrell — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:12:35 +0000

Winner, 2011 Short Short Contest. Isabel would attribute her undoing to that summer in Crete. She would recall how she was minding her own business, reproachlessly conducting research on the iconography of 14th-Century frescoes, when she found God...

Justin Winslow

Justin Winslow — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:12:07 +0000

Justin Winslow is an illustrator who has a true connection between hand and heart. His ink, watercolor, and digital images reflect his fascination with everything symbolic, from pop icons to monsters to visual metaphors. He was formally trained at the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. When he is not creating original art, he can be found working out of his Brooklyn based studio for freelance clients. His main illustration site can be visited at www.justinwinslow.com and his Mythfits webcomic can be found at mythfits-comic.blogspot.com.

Edie Watches the Tsunami from her Bed at Life Care Rehabilitation Center in Las Vegas, March 2011

Paige Riehl — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:11:45 +0000

First Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Poetry Award. Through the window was the concrete parking lot. Cars came and went as if the drivers couldn’t decide....

Moss

Christie B. Cochrell — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:10:48 +0000

Winner, 2011 Short Short Contest. "A rolling stone gathers no moss." That was the creed of the Stone family, proclaimed like God's own truth by Mr. Stone all through the two boys' school years...

Hunger for Love: David Winner’s The Cannibal of Guadalajara

Tyler C. Gore — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:09:29 +0000

Review: The Cannibal of Guadalajara by David Winner (Gival Press, 2010). Don't be let the lurid title fool you; it's well-chosen, but not for the reasons you might think at first....

Leopard Skin Coat

Jennifer Adams — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:09:47 +0000

Second Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Fiction Award. A black cab dropped them off at his family's London townhouse in the middle of a side street smashed between Notting Hill and Kensington. They stepped out....

The Mourning Dove

L. E. Grabowski-Cotton — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:10:21 +0000

First Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Fiction Award. When Emily entered the kitchen that evening, she wasn't surprised to see newspapers spread all over the floor, the counters, the table. There seemed to be less than yesterday....

Daylight Savings

Pamela Kenley-Meschino — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:51:34 +0000

This could be my secret hour when the loose ends get gathered

Ophelia’s Dress

Pamela Kenley-Meschino — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:47:51 +0000

Just call me Shakespeare’s girl. Caught between folios. Pressed into parchment. Dropped...

Maria

Adam Chambers — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:47:19 +0000

First Prize, 2010 Literal Latte Poetry Award. Much came into the clay that was not intended: the round bottom and the quivering lip; the hollowness of years...

With Shakespeare in the Admissions Room at Yale

Marc Harshman — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:32:59 +0000

Winner, 2010 Literal Latte Short Short Contest. The bulldog squats on the mantel, smug in his silence. Inside the mirror a man is noosing his blue tie through the collar of a yellow shirt. The dental work crowning the wainscoting empowers the room to speak for everyone....

Arched Angels

Adam Chambers — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:22:08 +0000

First Prize, 2010 Literal Latte Poetry Award. The last thing that I wrote, the last thing I will ever write about mushrooms...

And The Catafalques Are All Empty

Marc Harshman — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:16:59 +0000

Winner, 2010 Literal Latte Short Short Contest. I am already dreaming about you, Russell Edson, wondering where you are, if you’re still tinkering with the language, leaving surprise packets in the unguarded provinces of our groins...

Dance of the Cakes

Terry Alan Kirts — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:14:19 +0000

The cakes dance and they dance and dance triple-tiered ballerinas pirouette down aisles of cream a pink cheek turns a tango’s luscious corner...

Bon Appetit

Carol Milkuhn — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:05:21 +0000

Winner, 2010 Literal Latte Food Verse Contest. We relax over lunch, sipping Courvoisier floats, savoring lemon slices sugared in champagne, while the waiter brings paté spiced with caper berries...

James Prochnik

James Prochnik — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:03:51 +0000

James Prochnik is an artist and photographer currently living and working in Brooklyn, NY. His photography has been licensed by Photonica (now part of Getty Images), published in Fortune Magazine, and used as book covers and illustrations for a variety of clients including Microsoft. In 2011, his artworks were featured in a solo show at The Soundry, in Vienna, Virginia, and in a group show at The D.C. Loft Gallery in Washington, D.C. You can read more about James at Plastic Army and follow James at his Facebook fan page.

Addicted to Chad

Michael Varga — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:02:37 +0000

Second Prize, 2010 Literal Latte Essay Award. When I was a child and my parents argued, my father used to escape to the basement and listen to his short-wave radio. Growing up in Philadelphia, I knew nothing of a wider world until I snuck down to the cluttered, messy cellar and eavesdropped behind the stacks of magic-markered wooden storage boxes and shelves of re-labeled peanut butter jars of nails and screws.

With These Shackles I Thee Wed

Cullen McVoy — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:00:45 +0000

First Prize, 2010 Literal Latte Essay Award.It was a time when guys were cats, gals were chicks, the police were pigs, and spray-can graffiti said things like, "Up against the wall, Motherfucker!" [....]

Four Stories from The Quiet

Robert Moulthrop — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:49:03 +0000

First Prize (tie), 2010 K. Margaret Grossman Fiction Award. I am still attracted to quiet. Even when Estelle was frenetic, I sensed an interior calm. She had combed her raven hair; her hands could sometimes be still. And her name held a promise: diamond pinpoints of light hanging still in a dark, black winter sky...

The Philosophers Club

Leslie Rodd — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:40:23 +0000

First Prize (tie), 2010 K. Margaret Grossman Fiction Award. In the shadows of early afternoon, on a day of breakthroughs, I'm standing with Smitty and Sonya in front of the Kansas Asylum for the Insane in Topeka, where we've come to visit Monica. It's June, 1940. We graduated from high school last week — our ceremony cancelled because of the tragedy — and already we're feeling old.

Sebastian Wahl

Sebastian Wahl — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:35:39 +0000

Using labor-intensive hand-collage techniques Wahl’s works on paper often harmonize concentric composition strategies with elements of landscape and narrative. Unlike many contemporary collage artists Wahl's astonishingly detailed works are executed without digital processes. A resin-coating technique he developed in 2006 lends a three-dimensional quality and an illuminating texture to each hand-constructed composition.

Down on the Farm

Sally Yocom — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:22:22 +0000

It gets my goat to hear you lie. We’ve hidden no black sheep. So hold your horses, cut the corn. Don’t make another peep...

Film Review: The Fall (2008)

Allison Har-Zvi — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 20:03:47 +0000

The Fall, a 2008 film directed by Tarsem Singh and starring Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru, explores the power of fantasy to impact reality and become inextricably tangled with the real world.

Igneous or “of fire”

Rosemary Royston — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:59:39 +0000

Winner, 2010 Literal Latte Food Verse Contest. Magma undulates in the mantle, forming as the Earth’s plates collide. A man and woman collide in a café. He pays for the coffee...

Fritillary

W.F. Lantry — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 19:58:11 +0000

I half believe all wines exist at once
within this glass, I almost half believe
each can be tasted singly...