Great new(ish) stories from around the Web. Forget work for a minute and read a story. It’s good for you.
– The rest is a hodgepodge, but I don’t advocate linear apprenticeships. A stint in the Bonn Residency. Fellowships at the Cleveland Place, then later a stage at Quebec Center. I entered that Appalachian Trail retreat in 1974, before Krenov revised it, but had to get helicoptered out. Probably my first infant crisis, before I knew to deliberately court interference. The debt to Meyerowitz is huge, obviously, if just for the innocence training. — Ben Marcus in Conjunctions
– The saw cut off one rounded edge that fell through a long narrow slot onto a belt, then a bell rang and the log came back. The cradle conveyor moved the log to the left, the rams holding the log firmly but not so tight that the wood would pinch the blade, and it went through again, then came back as the bell rang. Now it had two square sides. — Nels Hanson in Splash of Red
– It was the most bizarre thing: she could’ve sworn that, after seven years, her body was rejecting her belly button ring. The piercing had never healed completely, never become a dry hole like her earlobes. Instead it was always a bit red, sometimes scabbing over, other times with traces of pus. — Christen Enos in the Portland Review
– My blood is a family automobile on fire but my toddling blood is untrained at being fuel so reverts to the purest form of accident, concedes its blood-flush, fuel-heart, to the inferno, to the shoulder gravel, to the sky, to the kids watching my blood crude to steel frame, roll cage, puddle to primer, rubber, plastic, caustic smoke gauding sky, the sky quite above and away from us, but right here so close to us, so close enough to clog the onlookers, the sheer-drags of their faces, our faces, lagging behind as brinks of my blood crag and uncrag in the gravel. — Adam Fell in Diagram
– Even easier for you now in the asylum: Mihai Eminescu, the maddest man in Romania. They say you think the stones in the yard look like diamonds, the leaves, money. Of course in your madness you’ve found a way to think that money does grow on trees. — Carrie Messenger in Redivider
– The day of the cookout Dan had a list of projects he was supposed to attend to, including hanging a spice rack in the kitchen and cleaning the grill. Instead he was defrosting the freezer. Texanna looked at the pyramid of frozen foods on the counter and took a deep breath. She stacked magazines on the coffee table. She moved her guitar from the couch to the corner. She’d never had a case for it and didn’t plan on investing in one now that Gwennie was the only one to take it out and pluck it. She used to enjoy guitar, before she got busy with motherhood. — Laura Gabel-Hartman in Make Magazine
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– Ed. Note: DSM is not affiliated with these publications. We merely appreciate the hard work being done by the authors and the editors and wish to bring more light to their efforts. Every Monday we present to our readers essays, poems and stories from other literary magazines. Our goal is to showcase some of the Web’s strongest writing, and also serve as a literary hub for time-pinched, interested readers. Meanwhile, throughout the week, we will continue to publish our own stories, interviews, and poems.
