Juan Manuel Ortega Alfonso Rodolfo Guererra rolled into town during the driest weeks of August, the dog days, when even children stayed indoors because it was too hot to play outside. He had traveled for weeks across the desert, stopping at whatever villages he encountered, but no place had given him reason to stay…
When all we have is song to fill the space between us, the feather of each note, frail flight of melody, a flock murmuring from my chest, I let go, sing distance and space into shapes you might hold in your mind, birds that form, fragment, coalesce and flee. This moment of rest, a dream, […]
The first thing that anyone would notice was the sign. It was supposed to be a tourist trap, but nobody seemed to have put much effort into attracting visitors. The sign was just a rotted out piece of wood lying flat in the grass, a broken off stump planted in the ground next to it. […]
Gabrielle had never noticed how loud Friday mornings were. Now that she slept on the couch, she felt the trash truck barreling through the walls, destroying her home. Bolting upright, she’d hear men laugh, cans tossed, the truck move on. After a few weeks of fearing she might wake to the front bumper of the […]
I have plans on the thick part of my hands & when they flush with un-tender flesh, build like a mountain risen to escape my own bones, you will see the structures behind me. All of them speaking of my shoulders. All of them whole & personal & held fast to my own Ohio. Darren […]
Standing with my friend in his garage, We look at things left over: Hose connections, extension cords, Kitchen utensils, power tools, Twenty years of memorabilia. His house has sold, Not for a high price; He’s glad to be out from under it. Another friend, Richard, will take his dog. Somehow, I say, I always thought […]
My mother used to say
if she ran out of money,
she would walk into the sea.
Just drive to the beach
and walk into the water,
keep walking until the ocean
swallowed her up…
On a chilly Saturday morning in October, Donald Shieffer found a mysterious postcard in the mailbox at his townhouse in Cincinnati. It pictured a swan in flight, white wings a blur, taking off from the surface of a gray pond edged with snow. The message read, “Poetry is made in the mouth.” The card had […]
Minny Glorious was well aware that many fervent readers of her client, Billy Benson, would probably apply the term “recluse” to the author’s public persona. While the term wasn’t used explicitly (perhaps out of politeness) in the letter that currently sat on the edge of her dark mahogany desk, she nevertheless read the official fan […]
The nitrous cloud goes berserk In the nineteenth century, when the toads Were writers thinking up Horror—she wounds me With her pale skin and liquid midsection, Scarcity is scarce, and I take it from there, holding gripes, The papers tell it, how the Pope goes pop Into a new old castle and the people go […]
My father held a grapefruit – the yellow-orange rind blending with the skin of his palm. Two knives on the cloth – one small, a bent edge of serrated teeth to dissect the flesh, the other long, broad, with a smooth blade. He held the larger, rested it on top of the fruit before a […]
I sip my black coffee, peering up at her. I have offered her a cup of café phin―slow-drip coffee. She palms the cup with both hands. Head lowered. The cup raised to her lips. First sip. Gingerly. Her brow furrowed. It’s so peaceful around here, she says, her partially-tilted face leaning into the morning light […]
IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF SAN FRANCISCO JESUS CHRIST, Plaintiffv. JOHN DOEs, JANE DOEs, and THE HOLY SEE, THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION, THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF AMERICA, THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH OF AMERICA, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, LAUGHING PANDA INDUSTRIES, et al Defendants Civil Action No. COMPLAINT Preliminary Statement 1. […]
Riva’s agency, International Transactions, Inc., specializes in a holistic approach—one that both nourishes its connections to the publishing and entertainment worlds and closely shepherds its authors through the world of publishing. Riva brought decades of experience in the publishing industry to Antioch in December with his lecture on the business of writing. Lunch Ticket Editor in Chief Lise Quintana spoke to Riva about his views on the publishing industry, where it’s heading, and how new authors can become part of it.
“There are mermaids in the water,” Pa always began. This was the preface to my brother’s favorite story. Pa would tell us how, if you were still and silent long enough at the edge of the dock, you could spy the shimmering green-gray of their fish tails as they flashed and disappeared. He said this mysterious disturbance…
Fact: My hands are too short to reach mom’s cancer. How Cancer Changed Me: My logic is the safest thing I have. I write lists about logic. I make everything neat and ordered. There is a careful, measured safety in lists. I can see how far they stretch. Nothing sneaks up on me. I love […]
This is the day her brother has a relapse and shoots heroin. It’s worse than the days when they were young and he would run with scissors on purpose. It’s worse than the days he would chase the neighbor’s fat cat, chucking clods of dirt. It’s worse than when he would come home with cuts […]
The thing about Danny MacIsaac was that he was average. Average weight, average height, average brown hair. He played hockey and baseball but he was never captain of the team or Most Valuable Player or anything. At school he half-slumped in the middle of the middle row, as if to mirror the position of his […]
[flash fiction] The color red possesses terrific power. Take a pair of scissors and cut something open: a pillow. Even though pillow stuffing is usually white, if you cut with a certain style and vigor, you will see red. Put this into a political context. Assuming you’re dealing with people who aren’t color blind, senile, […]
While they are standing online waiting to jump into the Double Dutch ropes, I overhear twelve year old Margie Golden tell Sarah Lundy about abortion. “What’s abortion?” I ask. “Never mind,” Margie says, tossing her fat braids that always hit her in her fat face when she tries to make her fat body jump. “What’s […]
The counselor’s room is never still. It is churning pipes and an hour-off ticking clock and Friends Care! posters flapping on paint-thick walls and a heat of stories pushing themselves forward, tangling around each other. The students wiggle, fidget, shake in the armchair, as if fighting off their own words. * * […]
Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and raised in Canada and the United States. He received a BA and MA in English Literature from the University of Albany-SUNY, and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. He is the author of several collections of both poetry and prose, the most recent […]
Listen kid, I know it’s your birthday and all, that you only turn ten once, and that this is your special day, but, come on, you’re crying over your balloon animal because you wanted a giraffe and you got an Irish Wolfhound, which you say looks retarded, and that I’m retarded; please, give me some […]
[flash fiction] To: Doctor Galen Alber Dean of the Occupational Sciences Department Ledford University Doctor Alber— I do not regret to inform you that I refuse to work with you any longer on your repulsive project. No need to lecture me about the consequences of this decision; I’m happy to withdraw from my research appointment […]
that an MRI sounds a bit like avant-garde dance music, or one of those key chains I had as a kid, where I’d press a button and it would shriek out some distorted beeps and static to mimic a machine gun, or a bomb falling from far away. No one told me that I should […]
When I was a child, I signed my granddaddy’s Social Security checks for him. He never learned to read or write, and he never attended any type of school. As the grandson of slaves from Georgia and South Carolina, all my granddaddy knew of the world was the tiny corner of northeast Georgia where we […]
In its last issue, Lunch Ticket featured an image by MANDEM—a collaborative team that includes Maize Arendsee and Moco Steinman-Arendsee. Intrigued by their work and process, Visual Arts Editor Ashley Perez decided to run an interview with the pair in the current issue. MANDEM describes itself as “Mythpunk,” a moniker that combines “Steampunk” (a retro-futurist […]
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