Posts by Lydia Conklin
489 Points
Andrew Borgstrom
I bought secondhand hunting attire that I only wore around the house. You corrected me when I called our apartment a house. We howled until we were gender tired. You howled when you stubbed your
The Man With Two Arms (An Excerpt)
Billy Lombardo
In the summer that followed Danny's sophomore year at U-High, he took Bridget to a White Sox game. He knocked at her door on a Sunday morning with a baseball glove in each hand and a White Sox
Spinning Yarns
Thomas Mundt
I did some fact-checking after the wedding. I bet you thought I never would, but I did. And you know what I found out? You were never an ace reliever in the Orioles' farm system, like I overheard
How Lucky, She Thought
Kelcy D. Wilburn
She woke up as excited as she had twenty years ago on a St. Patrick's Day morning in her childhood home, despite the fact that everything around her was unfamiliar, despite the fact that her hotel
Ma Vie En Rose: My Life Wrapped in Cellophane
Neil de la Flor
She is not a warthog in the zoo. She travels with a whip and rope through space and time. She is not a girl but feels like one. She understands the principles of Schrödinger and Heisenberg,
Chorale for the First Rental House on Your Block
Craig Davis
Outside on his porch was an indoor sofa. But he kept the lawn mowed. Early in the morning when the grass was still too wet — there he was, limping behind the mower, cursing God and us when it
An Interview with Laird Hunt (Part 2)
Jim Ruland
A Conversation with Laird Hunt (cont'd)
(read part one of the interview here)
THE REIFICATION OF FICTION
Ruland: When last we talked, you recommended some
Two Stories
David William Hill
The Night Sky
Looking west over the ocean, watching the yellow crescent moon dip behind the low strip of fog off the coast. It disappeared and returned several times, as the fog bank in its
Puppeteers
Lydia Ship
Unfortunately, Chin fed her sock puppets too many vegetables. She didn't always feed them in front of me, but the smell of steamed broccoli and half-empty bowls of it greeted me in our dorm suite
An Interview with Laird Hunt (Part 1)
Jim Ruland
A Conversation with Laird Hunt
A criminal operative helps a woman fill her shelves with mundane objects. A gentleman with psychic powers reflects on the days before his wife went insane. A
Sad, Sad, Sad
Stace Budzko
Not more than two steps in and Ali had the Sadness Museum exhibit sized up.
Her words, This exhibit is sad, sad, sad.
I tried to look on the bright side. My words, At least it's
Fan Fiction in the Voice of Kobe Bryant
Karl Taro Greenfeld
One of the things that most fans don't know about NBA superstars, is that we like to meet in the off season and fight to the death. So, this past Saturday, I called LeBron James while I was
Notes on a Failed Town
Trent England
It was a long time before slavery went away. The town kept their own slaves well into the Carnegie Administration, trading them and gifting the young to newlyweds. When it was outlawed, seven
House Calls
Chad Simpson
The sun wasn't even fully up yet and there I was, on some stranger's roof, about to begin work for the day, when this girl, maybe four or five years old, tottered down the front steps of the house
A Businessman &
Reynard Seifert
I put on my suit. It's a business suit. I'm a businessman and I mean business. I mean 'business' with a big 'B' and an ampersand. So from now on, I will say, I'm a Businessman &. Because it
Mechler & I
Andrew Roe
With apologies to Jorge Luis Borges' "Borges and I"
The other one, the one called Melcher, is the fuckup.
I travel a lot for work (sales) and when I'm driving or flying or sitting in an
An Interview with J. Robert Lennon
Andrew Ervin
I first read J. Robert Lennon in a short-lived lit mag out of Philly called Night Rally. I picked up a copy of the first issue at Borders after a Michael Chabon reading in October 2000, and