Fiction Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 The King of Stories by Adam Strassberg he king sat upon his throne. He was not a king in the usual sense. He had never led an army. He had never won a battle. He claimed no castles and owned no lands. Neither was he even a king in the metaphorical sense. He was not some king of heaven, or hell, or even rock, sports, shoes or ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Flash Fiction by Elizabeth Spencer Spragins pecial Delivery Fifty-five degrees will be fatal, Mom,” Jeremy pleaded. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the phone and eyed the two-foot snow drifts outside. “I know you’re on duty at the hospital for another eight hours, but I can have Zelda and Artemis ready to go in ten minutes. You could pick us up on your lunch break. Please.” His ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #13: Animals & Health July 24th, 2023 Group by Victoria Costello ight kids, counting Teague, are sitting, or lying on beat up chairs and sofas in the clinic lounge. He doesn’t dare look at any of them above the waist. He can hardly make himself breathe. It’s like facing off against a bunch of fighters in a ring. He knows they’re checking him out and trading smirky looks. Hanging with the devil in ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Putting the Top Down by David Blistein id’s twenty-third radiation treatment took place on the fall equinox—a day when he’d seen fire and he’d seen rain…and hurricanes and heat waves and cold snaps and boring gray season-less in-between days that were neither warm enough to feel like summer nor chilly enough to feel like fall. Days when the leaves had either turned color a few days early or ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 To by Lee Eustace To: Eight Months Pregnant Me Cc: The Mother I Am Bcc: The Mother I Wanted to Be Subject: After the birth Dear Versionist Me, Yes. Well done. You’ve read the baby books. “What to Expect,” “How to Cope,” “First Time Parents.” They all look familiar, don’t they? Well, here’s my first tip – reading those books doesn’t mean a fraction of what you think when that baby does ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Finally Dead by Myra Seles ooking back, I knew I wanted my wife of 26 years to die after her epithelial ovarian cancer diagnosis--Stage 4; five-year survival rate. Five years was too long. The Wednesday she got diagnosed my heart lodged in my boney knees and boney elbows. Not in the way where your heart races and then completes the race and slows to normal. No. This time my heart ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 The Swan Floating Serenely by Niamh O'Brien y diagnosis sat in my hand, a thin paper sheet covered in words that meant nothing to me but broken. The piece of paper made my pain, my struggle, it made it real. It wasn’t all in my head. Or rather it was. My diagnosis meant yellow and white pills. It meant leaving school early to go to the doctors. It meant that ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Birthday Boy by William Cass y son Danny’s twenty-sixth birthday. Developmental age, though, perhaps three months old. Severely-disabled/medically-fragile since birth. Diagnosis: undetermined genetic syndrome. Seizure started his day early. I knew, startled awake to the alarm of his sat monitor signaling a rapid spike in heart rate. By the time I’d hurried the eight steps from my bedroom into his, the convulsions were already subsiding, so just a short ...
Read MoreFiction Summer Supplement 2022 September 26th, 2022 University of Iowa International Writing Program Africa Cohort The Monks of Iwu by Jude Idada he monks live in the monastery’s seclusion, its walls painted a deep ochre to match the earth, roofs a monochrome of ash-coloured slates to rebuff the sun, windows large and nearly always open with net meshing to welcome the breeze while keeping the malaria wielding mosquitoes at bay. The large compound in which the monastery sits is ...
Read More