CNF Archives - Lunch Ticket

Dinosaurs

November 24, 2025/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2026 / Michael J Pagán

There was a thing called Heaven and a thing called God, and there was also once a thing called Immortality, long before the prophecies raged and sneered. And then came the sound of a light from just behind the horizon’s seam, and then there were Fathers who fell spectacularly out of the sky. Some with a crash, while others circled the air like frigate birds, the atmosphere heavy with their bodies. The wind smiling against their pale skin. Their milky eyes and teeth smiling back at the world—but we didn’t know then. We couldn’t know. How a man could smile and smile and still be the villain. By then, the world became full of fathers like you. Full of misery. Full of madness.

author wearing glasses smiling directly at the camera

The Weight of Small Things

November 3, 2025/in CNF, Flash Prose, Winter-Spring 2026 / Mark Hall

I’m on my hands and knees, my most frequent posture whenever I visit Mother. This time, I’m scrubbing the floor in her living room. “What does she do, this housekeeper of yours?” I ask.

“See these linen pants?” Mother replies, plucking up the smooth white fabric. “Elaine keeps a nice crease in them for me.”

Under the Siren: Alexandria, 1973

November 3, 2025/in CNF, DWM, Winter-Spring 2026 / Johanna Elattar

The photograph shows me at three years old, seated before a cake on a pedestal, flowers arranged like sentries at the edge of the frame. I wear a white lace dress that scratches my collarbone and a veil pinned into the heavy part of my long, dark hair. My eyes are lowered, solemn, as if I understood the weight of the moment. But the truth is simpler: I had a fever, my eyes watered constantly, and the photographer’s lights were too sharp for me to face. “Look down at the cake,” he instructed, and I obeyed. No child looked more serious than I did in that picture.

The Outhouse Keeps The Score

November 2, 2025/in CNF, DWM, Winter-Spring 2026 / Itto Outini

I’ve been asked on more than one occasion how I go to the bathroom as a blind person, and while I’ve given a variety of answers over the years, I usually respond like this: In the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, everyone goes to the bathroom blind.

We didn’t have running water in the rural interior of Boulemane Province, where I was born and raised, which meant that we didn’t have flush toilets. We didn’t have electricity, which meant that we wouldn’t have been able to see our toilets after sunset even if we’d had them. We did have flashlights, but the women rarely used them for fear of drawing unwanted attention. Plenty of men had nothing better to do after dark than to skulk around outdoors, waiting for women with full bladders and empty hearts to come along and swoon into their arms.

On Insignificance

November 1, 2025/in CNF, DWM, Winter-Spring 2026 / Rachel Whalen

As we bombed Iran, my cat got out. On TVs in the cantinas and fondas of Mexico City, the war reels played: Iran, Israel, United States, nuclear threat. Blockades, Palestinians, Gaza, mass starvation. Stateside, shaky footage of ICE officers razing entire communities to the ground. In my new home in Mexico, behind suited men serving orange slices and mezcal, behind swishing plates of chilaquiles and blue corn tortillas, the broadcasts showed my country once again suffocating the world, snuffing it out, shattering people and places into oblivion.

Mothers are the Zest

November 1, 2024/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2025 / Linda Drach

On the Saturday before Mother’s Day, Envy Nail & Spa is an explosion of pink. Pale pink like rosé and the velvety petals of peonies. Hot pink like bubblegum and the ruffled edges of sunset.

black and white image of a bearded male looking off to the side

Draft for an Obituary

October 3, 2024/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2025 / Marc Nieson

My mother is dying. We’re not quite sure when, but one needs be prepared. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. She’s ninety-two, after all, and has been ailing for quite a while. Ninety-two, and has outlived anyone in the family by decades. Her parents, her sister, her husband, a child. All her in-laws, several nieces and nephews, countless friends.

Translating His Mother with My Own

September 15, 2024/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2025 / Martha Witt

Martha Witt is the author of the novel Broken as Things Are (Henry Holt, 2004; Picador, 2005). She has received a Fulbright grant and fellowships from Yaddo, Ragdale, and VCCA colonies. Her short fiction, some of which has been translated into Italian, appears in national and international literary journals. Italica Press has published four novels and two plays she co-translated with Mary Ann Frese Witt.

In My Arms

June 7, 2024/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2024 / Kelly Gray

The power has been out for four days, after a bomb cyclone ripped the tops off redwood trees and deposited them around the neighborhood. Initially, my daughter, well past the cusp of patience, asked for story ideas so that she could write and keep the boredom at bay, but of course, my stories are not what she wants. This habit is about a year old, soliciting my ideas only to find a world of her own—hovering, perfecting the art of the unsaid empty space.

Vanilla

May 7, 2024/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2024 / Jennifer Pinto

After my mom remarried, Dad bought an ice cream stand. It was the kind of place that was open only during the summer months and attracted the local crowd. I’m not sure what prompted him to buy this business. Maybe it was a tit for tat move? You know like, she got a new husband? I’ll get a new side hustle. He named it the Dairy Oasis, so who knows. Maybe it was more safe harbor than life well-lived revenge.

image of a person with long hair and wearing glasses

I Guess You Like It Here

June 10, 2023/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2023 / Nora Carr

When we wake up in the morning Sam says, “Okay, get up, let’s go. Before you start distracting me.” Before I start distracting him. Like it’s my fault he just wants to get me naked all the time. By the time I’m putting on my pants he’s on the couch checking his email. I’ve already decided that this isn’t happening again.

Unit Test

November 25, 2022/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2023 / Rebecca Burke

Ghost Birds

June 4, 2022/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2022 / Karin Hedetniemi

We’re erasing the whiteboard. We’re not going to drive the Pacific Coast Highway as planned. We won’t hike a trail in the Olympic Mountains, beachcomb for agates on the Oregon coast, or spot migrating shorebirds.

Cataclysms

December 3, 2021/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2022 / Julia F. Green

On the day that Christine Blasey Ford testified about being assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, we found Newton, our nineteen-year-old cat, cowering behind the toilet. Each time we reached for him, he recoiled.
My husband adopted Newton before he and I met. . .

Photo Credit: Christopher Lomiguen

Pleiku

November 30, 2021/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2022 / H'Abigail Mlo

I awake to the shrill of chickens, nature’s alarm clock. My two sisters, with whom I’m sharing a bedroom and two bare mattresses, retreat under their blankets like hermit crabs to their shells. Avoiding the hazy dawn that spills out of the window and into the room. . .

David DiNisco

Regarding the Highchair You’re Selling on Facebook

May 20, 2021/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2021 / Liz Breen

Crazy because ten years has gone by and still, I’m not as old as you were when we dated. Would you call what we did “dating”? I used to begin every story about us with “When I was 18, I dated my teacher,” but now I find myself saying, “We had a two-year relationship.” But even that word —“relationship”— it feels too— what?

Photo credit: Iván Mera

Year, Make, Model

May 17, 2021/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2021 / Laura Seldner

There is an absence of what I have grown accustomed to: tension, uncertainty, fear. I am acutely aware of how, next to my Uncle, the world is a good place with good people and I am not something that has already been broken. I am eight-years-old and tired all the time. [. . .]

Imagine Yourself a Strained Body Breaking to Recover

December 7, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2021 / Matt Colangelo

I am floating down an open, empty stretch of I-95, listening to the stock market crash, trying to figure out what I am doing—why I am going home—to take care of whom. It is the twelfth of March, and I have decided that I am coming back for my brother.[…]

Xinjiang—A Beautiful Place

December 5, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2021 / Daien Guo

This is not my story to tell. I was only a brief visitor to this land. Today, I read that the old town of Kashgar has been torn down and modernized. The Id Kah Mosque is closed to both visitors and worshippers. The city is rife with police checkpoints, and security cameras with facial recognition technology are installed at every street corner.[…]

Surrogate Memory

December 4, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2021 / Yasmine Eve Lucas

What children of survivors add to the gift is a moral imperative of conveying knowledge; feelings of being dwarfed by the past; guilt at being alive; and kinship with other descendants.[…]

White Voice (Un)Masked

December 3, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2021 / Bill Marsh

The white male body that exists and speaks—and shops and wears a mask (or doesn’t)—can also wield a gun, and kneel, and kill, as Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin proved when he crushed the life out of George Floyd.[…]

Those You Neglect

December 1, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Winter-Spring 2021 / Randy William Santiago

He ain’t my favorite person, she’d say, but he is your father. A simple truth he ignored, never once attempting to bridge the gap. Lived ten minutes away, worked even closer, but he was like a ghost, an apparition, someone we fabricated a connection with but who would ultimately vanish.[…]

On Twerking and Writing

June 13, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Rois M. Beal

As anyone who has ever heard a black comic perform or listened to a rap song knows, we don’t do
humblebragging. When you are the bomb, you simply say so.[…]

Ambiguity

June 12, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Storey Clayton

So, if I feel so alienated from gender, why should it be such a determining factor in who I would like? I can’t imagine making any woman who likes men happy. Wouldn’t we all be better off just liking everyone?[…]

Monstera Deliciosa Variegata: Grief and the Search for a Rare Houseplant

June 10, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Sarah Hoenicke

My feelings didn’t shift, but my body did. I knelt beside you on our bed and brought your head to my shoulder. I repeated her message. But you already knew. You had seen my face change.[…]

A Life in Six Thousand, Five Hundred and Forty Songs

June 9, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Pat Hulsebosch

The small FedEx box arrived in DC bearing an unlikely return address: Peter C. Hulsebosch III, Houston, TX. Surely this wasn’t from my brother, the brother who’d once told me he would never send a card, much less a gift, because then I’d get used to it […]

Credit: Paige DePratter

42,844

June 8, 2020/in CNF, CNF, Summer-Fall 2020 / Megan Lea

Simian Immunodeficiency Virus adapted to live in the body of a person, and then the window was pried
open: open to spread through the villages of Cameroon, and then the rest of Africa, and then the world
beyond, until it found its way to a club in the suburbs of New Orleans and into the lifeblood of the man
who lived next door, my uncle.[…]

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