by Richard Fulco
The night had been cold. The heat was not working properly in the bedroom, and when Joe awoke he discovered that the comforter was on the floor and that his hands were missing. He looked down at where his hands had been for more than thirty years and instead saw two bloody stumps. At first, he thought that his two cats (who he had forgotten to feed for the past two days) sitting at the foot of the bed might have gnawed them off, but there wasn’t any blood on their fur or whiskers. He looked under the bed for his hands. He looked behind the busted-up, broken-down, rusted radiator. He even looked in the bathroom, for he remembered having relieved himself during the night, and they may have fallen in the toilet. He looked at the blinking, orange glow of the alarm clock. The forsaken thing had never been trustworthy. Over the past few months, Joe had been late to work more than a dozen times, and his supervisor told him that if there were one more infraction, his tardiness would be grounds for dismissal. He tried to remove his boxer shorts and undershirt only to no avail, then he jumped into the bathtub, but he could not properly regulate the water with his feet, scalding his chest.
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Tagged as:
New Literature Online,
Richard Fulco,
Short Story
by Brandon Shuler
i can’t see the sun my confidence is lacking
can i kiss you
no my libido is vacationing with my confidence
can i hold your hand
no your confidence is lacking
maybe i should go
maybe
little Jackie Kerouac is chasing the fellahin through the sierra madre mountains with tiny brown terrys left over from the contented western valleys of his american journey—roadside whorehouses wailing with loud bass lines beating through the countryside supply the landscape with an entire generation of green-eyed, blonde-haired happy marauders. [2]
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Tagged as:
Brandon Shuler,
New Literature Online,
Short Story
by Daniel Luévano
The woman who used to be our aunt
—Amid burning dust in Ciudad Juárez
Outside a cinderblock home
Where I had to use the busted toilet—
She & her friends cradled & cooed
Over a lifelike doll of the Christchild.
Inside, the faithful propped
Their relics on a card table,
Went to pray in the corrugated
Shade of the patio.
Came back to blood
Raised from the icons & rosaries.
The second miracle was the dancing sun
—If you stared into it
It would leap & zigzag.
Faith healers wired for sound call the truly
Infirm to rise, & they do.
Language adheres to itself only, yet shrouds
Our littlest gasp.
There are accounts of cousins
Getting laid before the funeral.
There’s our origin before oceans
& our brains that flesh
Out—sniff, peep, tongue, etcetera—
The only world amid
Odd relations & an unstable
Deep star, amid atmospheres
Of absolute dust.
The next miracle made the papers.
___________________________________________
Daniel Luévano’s work recently appeared online with Verse, and more poems will appear soon in The Shattered Wig Review and The Saint Ann’s Review. He lives in Fort Collins, CO, with his wife, daughter and son.
Tagged as:
Daniel Luévano,
New Literature Online,
Poetry
by David Erlewine
You remember not letting me in the house until I fought Jeremy Rowe? He’d followed me home from school, looking to avenge his sister’s good name. I’d insulted her after his 347th impersonation of my stutter. He’d perfected it over time, the way I looked up and bit my lip, how my eyes glossed over. Perfection led me to calling her a slutbucket.
Jeremy stood at the edge of our property, calling me “D-D-D-Danny,” yelling that I was a chickenshit. You locked the screen door, said get off the fucking patio and remember to jab.
At some point, I think after I had grass stuffed in my mouth, I glanced over at the front door. I didn’t see you.
When it was over, I whacked the screen door until you appeared. We stood there for at least a minute. You finally unlocked the door. Before going in I nearly said, “f-f-f-f-fuck you.” I think I wanted you to knock me out.
_____________________________________
David Erlewine’s fiction appears in FRiGG, the Los Angeles Review, Pedestal Magazine, and others. He is JMWW’s flash editor.
Tagged as:
David Erlewine,
New Literature Online,
Short Story
